Were the Hartz Reforms Responsible for the Improved Performance of the German Labour Market?
14 Pages Posted: 7 Feb 2013
Date Written: February 2013
Abstract
From 2005 to 2011 employment rose and unemployment rates declined considerably in Germany. This favourable development followed the labour market reforms initiated in 2003, and there has been a tendency to attribute the improved labour market performance to those reforms. Causal micro‐evaluations of the various measures, however, show hardly any effects on variables that can be related to employment. Rather, it seems that employment increased in response to a process of wage moderation that had already begun in the 1990s. It is possible that this moderation was itself partially a product of the reforms, but this needs further investigation.
Keywords: Germany, Hartz reforms, labour markets, unemployment
JEL Classification: J38, J48, J58, J64, J68
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
What Explains the German Labor Market Miracle in the Great Recession?
By Michael C. Burda and Jennifer Hunt
-
What Explains the German Labor Market Miracle in the Great Recession?
By Michael C. Burda and Jennifer Hunt
-
Did the Hartz Reforms Speed-Up Job Creation? A Macro-Evaluation Using Empirical Matching Functions
-
Reforming German Labor Market Institutions: A Dual Path to Flexibility
By Werner Eichhorst and Paul Marx
-
Is Short-Time Work a Good Method to Keep Unemployment Down?
By Pierre Cahuc and Stéphane Carcillo
-
Is Short-Time Work a Good Method to Keep Unemployment Down?
By Pierre Cahuc and Stephane L. Carcillo
-
Short-Time Work Benefits Revisited: Some Lessons from the Great Recession
By Tito Boeri and Herbert Brücker
-
Short-Time Compensation and Establishment Exit: An Empirical Analysis with French Data
By Oana Calavrezo, Richard Duhautois, ...