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The IZA Evaluation Dataset: Towards Evidence-Based Labor Policy-Making

The evaluation of labor market policies has become an important issue in many European countries. In recent years, a number of them have opened their administrative databases for evaluation studies. The advantages of administrative data are straightforward: they are accurate, contain a large number of observations (in some cases the whole population) and usually cover a long period of time. However, ...

The short- and medium-term distributional effects of the German minimum wage reform

This study quantifies the distributional effects of the minimum wage introduced in Germany in 2015. Using detailed Socio-Economic Panel survey data, we assess changes in the hourly wages, working hours, and monthly wages of employees who were entitled to be paid the minimum wage. We employ a difference-in-differences analysis, exploiting regional variation in the “bite” of the minimum wage. At the ...

The Short-Run Employment Effects of the German Minimum Wage Reform

We assess the short-term employment effects of the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015. For this purpose, we exploit variation in the regional treatment intensity, assuming that the stronger a minimum wage 'bites' into the regional wage distribution, the stronger the regional labour market will be affected. In contrast to previous studies, we draw upon detailed ...

Caregiving, Welfare States and Mothers' Poverty

Benefit Duration, Unemployment Duration and Job Match Quality: A Regression-Discontinuity Approach

The generosity of the Unemployment Insurance system (UI) plays a central role for the job search behavior of unemployed individuals. Standard search theory predicts that an increase in UI benefit generosity, either in terms of benefit duration or entitlement, has a negative impact on the job search activities of the unemployed increasing their unemployment duration. Despite the disincentive effect ...

Self-Employment Dynamics, State Dependence and Cross-Mobility Patterns

Evaluating the German "Mini-Job" Reform Using a True Natural Experiment

Increasing work incentives for people with low income is a common topic in the policy debate across European countries. The ‘Mini-Job’ reform in Germany had a similar motivation. We carry out an ex-post evaluation to identify the short-run effects of this reform. Our identification strategy uses an exogenous variation in the interview months in the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), which allows us ...

Short-Run Distributional Effects of Public Education Transfers to Tertiary Education Students in Seven European Countries

Direct provision of public services can alter the balance of resources across income groups. We focus on the issues arising when taking account of the impact of publicly provided education services across the income distribution. We combine OECD information on spending per student in particular levels of the education system with micro data from nationwide income surveys to track the allocation of ...

Poverty Dynamics in Europe. A Multilevel Discrete-Time Recurrent Hazard Analysis

Does Money Buy Immigrant Happiness?

The relationship between income and happiness for international immigrants has been relatively unexplored. A handful of cross-sectional studies has shown that income and happiness are positively correlated after migration, and that wealthier immigrants are more satisfied with their post-migration lives than are their less privileged peers. What is unclear is if the link between income and happiness ...