Publications of the Research Unit Labour Markets and Social Insurance

  1. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 22-031 // 2022

    Adjustments of Local Labour Markets to the COVID-19 Crisis: the Role of Digitalisation and Working-from-Home

    Employment responses to the COVID-19 crisis differed widely across German local labour markets at the beginning of the pandemic, with differences in short-time work rates of up to 20 percentage points. We show…

  2. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 22-029 // 2022

    College Openings and Local Economic Development

    We study how the presence of a college affects the local economy using administrative data. Our analysis exploits the opening of new institutions of tertiary education across Germany in the 1980s and 1990s. The…

  3. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 22-025 // 2022

    Reversing Fortunes of German Regions, 1926–2019: Boon and Bane of Early Industrialization?

    This paper shows that 19th-century industrialization is an important determinant of the significant changes in Germany’s economic geography observed in recent decades. Using novel data on economic activity in…

  4. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 22-024 // 2022

    Minimum Wages and the Rise in Solo Self-Employment

    Solo self-employment is on the rise despite less favorable working conditions compared to traditional jobs. We show that the introduction of minimum wages in German industries led to an increase in the share of…

  5. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 22-024 // 2022

    Minimum Wages and the Rise in Solo Self-Employment

    Solo self-employment is on the rise despite less favorable working conditions compared to traditional jobs. We show that the introduction of minimum wages in German industries led to an increase in the share…

  6. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 22-023 // 2022

    Estimation of Group Structures in Panel Models with Individual Fixed Effects

    The fixed effects (FE) panel model is one of the main econometric tools in empirical economic research. A major practical limitation is that the parameters on time-constant covariates are not identifiable. This…