A generous welfare state can help reduce unemployment - if there are good job opportunities for the jobless.

Are state unemployment benefits a safety net or a hammock for the lazy? In new research, Thomas Biegert explores the effects of benefits on job seekers in 20 European countries and the US. He finds that in some countries, generous benefits are linked with high unemployment rates, while in others, the opposite is the case. This difference, he writes, may ..

Welfare Benefits and Unemployment in Affluent Democracies: The Moderating Role of the Institutional Insider/Outsider Divide

The effect of generous welfare benefits on unemployment is highly contested. The dominant perspective contends that benefits provide disincentive to work, whereas others portray benefits as job-search subsidies that facilitate better job matches. Despite many studies of welfare benefits and unemployment, the literature has neglected how this relationship might vary across institutional contexts. This article investigates how unemployment benefits and minimum income benefits affect unemployment across levels of the institutional insider/outsider divide. I analyze the moderating role of the disparity in employment protection for holders of permanent and temporary contracts and of the configuration of wage bargaining. The analysis combines data from 20 European countries and the United States using the European Union Labour Force Survey and the Current Population Survey 1992-2009. I use a pseudo-panel approach, including fixed effects for sociodemographic groups within countries and interactions between benefits and institutions. The results indicate that unemployment benefits and minimum income benefits successfully subsidize job search and reduce unemployment in labor markets with a moderate institutional insider/outsider divide. However, when there is greater disparity in employment protection and when bargaining either combines low unionization with high centralization or high unionization with low centralization, generous benefits create a disincentive to work, plausibly because attractive job opportunities are scarce

Labor market institutions, the insider/outsider divide and social inequalities in employment in affluent countries

This article investigates the role of labor market institutions for social inequalities in employment. To distinguish institutional impacts for men and women, age groups and educational levels the analysis draws on data from 21 countries using the European Union Labor Force Survey and the Current Population Survey 1992–2012. The analysis demonstrates that there is significant heterogeneity in the relationship between institutions and employment across social groups. In line with the literature on dualization, institutions that arguably protect labor market insiders, i.e. employment protection, unionization and unemployment benefits, are frequently associated with greater inequality between typically disadvantaged groups and their insider peers. By contrast, institutions that discriminate less between insiders and outsiders, i.e. active labor market policies, minimum income benefits and centralized wage bargaining at times boost social equality on the labor market. The insider/outsider argument provides a valuable heuristic for assessing heterogeneity in institutional impacts, yet in several instances the results deviate from the expectations

Patterns of non-employment: How labour market institutions shape social inequality in employment performance in Europe

The central research question of this dissertation is how labor market institutions shape social patterns of employment. More specifically, it analyzes how labour market policies and regulation affect the labour market performance of men and women, different age groups, and educational levels. Before conducting three empirical studies, a framework paper elaborates on why a focus on unemployment is not sufficient when interested in the distribution of employment and the disadvantaged positions of women, youth, older workers and those with low education. I argue that periods of inactivity need to be included and thus non-employment as a whole has to be subject of labour market analysis. Furthermore, the framework develops a macro-micro model of institutional impact on individual employment. It contrasts theoretical expectations of liberal economics with approaches that emphasize the importance of current labour market positions for subsequent careers and longitudinal search and matching processes. The three empirical studies proceed in two steps. First, study 1 quantifies the relationship between institutions and the social composition of non-employment in a multi-country analysis. The analysis establishes that institutional arrangements’ impact is heterogeneous. In general, social risk groups are affected more strongly, both negatively, by employment protection, powerful unions, unemployment insurance and labour taxes, and positively, by active labour market polices, centralized wage bargaining and social assistance. Second, taking a life-course perspective, studies 2 and 3 explore transitions and trajectories out of non-employment in the United Kingdom and Germany. The more strongly regulated German labour market leads to slower transitions back into work and – surprisingly – less stable long-term re-entry compared to the United Kingdom. German transitions and subsequent trajectories also exhibit an increased social inequality. Results from the three studies underline that institutional arrangements, which provide insiders with advantages, increase social inequality, lower overall employment and chances to return to work. Institutional arrangements that regulate the labour market in an indiscriminate way are associated with better social inclusion and higher employment

The conditional effect of technological change on collective bargaining coverage

Recent work in labor economics has shown that technological change has induced labor market polarization, an increase in demand for both high and low skill jobs, but declining demand for middle skill routine task jobs. We argue that labor market polarization should affect firms’ participation in collective agreements, but only in countries where laws automatically extending collective agreements to nonparticipating firms are weak. We develop an argument in which labor market polarization increases the distance between different skill groups of workers in both preferences for unionization and leverage to realize those preferences. Because of this, an increase in labor market polarization should be associated with a decline in collective bargaining coverage. We test our hypothesis about collective agreement extension and collective bargaining coverage in a cross-national sample of 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries from 1970 to 2010 and our hypothesis about labor market polarization in German firm-level and industry-level data from 1993–2007. We find a negative relationship in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development sample between technological change and collective bargaining coverage only in countries that make little or no use of extension procedures. We find that higher workforce skill polarization is associated with lower collective agreement participation in both German firm-level and industry-level samples

Attosecond core-level spectroscopy reveals the flow of excitation in a material between light, carriers and phonons

© 2022 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.We use attosecond core-level X-ray spectroscopy to disentangle the spectral and dynamical signatures of energy conversion pathways between photons, charge carriers and the lattice in graphite with attosecond precision and across a picosecond range.Peer ReviewedArticle signat per 19 autors/es: T.P.H. Sidiropoulos1*, N. Di Palo1, D.E. Rivas1,2, S. Severino1, M. Reduzzi1, B. Nandy1, B. Bauerhenne3, S. Krylow3, T. Vasileiadis4, T. Danz5, P. Elliott6,7, S. Sharma6, K. Dewhurst7, C. Ropers5, Y. Joly8, K. M. E. Garcia3, M. Wolf4, R. Ernstorfer4, J. Biegert1,9 // 1 ICFO - Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain; 2 European XFEL GmbH, Holzkoppel 4, 22869 Schenefeld, Germany; 3 Theoretische Physik, FB-10, Universität Kassel, 34132 Kassel, Germany; 4 Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin, Germany; 5 4th Physical Institute - Solids and Nanostructures, University of Göttingen, Germany; 6 Max-Born-Institut für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie, 12489 Berlin, Germany; 7 Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik, Weinberg 2, 06120 Halle, Germany; 8 Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, Institut Néel, 38000 Grenoble, France; 9 ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Barcelona, Spain // * present address: Max-Born-Institut für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie, 12489 Berlin, GermanyPostprint (author's final draft

Imaging the Renner-Teller effect using laser-induced electron diffraction

Structural information on electronically excited neutral molecules can be indirectly retrieved, largely through pump-probe and rotational spectroscopy measurements with the aid of calculations. Here, we demonstrate the direct structural retrieval of neutral carbonyl disulfide (CS$_2$) in the B$^1$B$_2$ excited electronic state using laser-induced electron diffraction (LIED). We unambiguously identify the ultrafast symmetric stretching and bending of the field-dressed neutral CS$_2$ molecule with combined picometer and attosecond resolution using intrapulse pump-probe excitation and measurement. We invoke the Renner-Teller effect to populate the B$^1$B$_2$ excited state in neutral CS$_2$, leading to bending and stretching of the molecule. Our results demonstrate the sensitivity of LIED in retrieving the geometric structure of CS$_2$, which is known to appear as a two-center scatterer

Imaging an isolated water molecule with an attosecond electron wave packet

We use laser-induced electron diffraction (LIED) to self-image the molecular structure of an isolated water molecular ion using its own retuning attosecond electron wave packet (EWP). Using LIED’s sub-femtosecond and picometre spatio-temporal resolution imaging capabilities, we observe the symmetric stretching of the O-H and H-H internuclear distances with increasing laser field strength.Postprint (published version

Taking lemons for a trial run: does type of job exit affect the risk of entering fixed-term employment in Germany?

A central argument for the deregulation of employment contracts is that fixed-term contracts boost employment of jobseekers with uncertain productivity by giving employers a tool to screen such applicants over a longer period of time before permanent hire. We test this proposition by comparing the risk of entering fixed-term employment for individually laid-off workers with that for individuals who have left their previous job for other reasons. This strategy is based on the assumption that in the German context individual lay-offs create uncertainty about jobseekers’ productivity. We use data on work exits and subsequent labour market re-entry of the prime-age workforce in Germany from waves 2000–2013 of the Socio-Economic Panel. Our results show that the risk of fixed-term employment is substantively smaller after voluntary job exits but reveal only a small and statistically insignificant risk difference between individual lay-offs and workplace closures after adjusting for differences in socio-economic background and characteristics of the previous job. These findings challenge the view that employers use fixed-term contracts as an instrument to screen specific groups of workers whose productivity is highly uncertain, at least with regard to recent career disruptions