The Duration of Youth Unemployment in West Germany: Some Theoretical Considerations

This paper presents a theoretical model dealing with the duration of youth unemployment in West Germany. Duration can be expressed in terms of the underlying hazard function. After a brief discussion of a reasonable shape of the hazard function a distinction is made with respect to the probabilities of receiving a job offer and accepting it. Determinants of the latter decision are developed using a unified model of consumption, leisure, and job search. Uncertainty and some restrictions such as standard work time and entitlement to unemployment compensation are taken into account. The probability of receiving a job offer depends, among other factors, on the screening process undertaken by the firms .

Real and Monetary Challenges to Wage Policy in Germany at the Turn of the Millennium: Technical Progress, Globalization and European Monetary Union

At the turn of the millennium three frequently cited potential causes of new challenges for wage p olicy in Germany are revisited in this study: skilled-biased technological progress, the increasing international integration of labor and product markets, and the monetary integration of the EMU. While there is now a fairly broad consensus on the basic fa cts about the development of wages and employment across skill groups, there is considerable disagreement to explain these trends, in particular to what extent skill-biased technical change and trade liberalization share a major responsibility. The conclusion of this paper is that both factors are at work with a slight emphasis on the first candidate. Moreover, while EMU in our opinion does not represent the major threat for wage policy, it is the Single Market which requires wage policy to be on the lookout and to meet those challenges.Monetary UnionWages, wage structure, skill-biased technological change, international trade, European Monetary Union, globalisation, globalization

Will the (German) NAIRU Please Stand up?

This paper deals with a critical assessment and a reestimation of the "non-accelerating in ation rate of unemployment" (NAIRU) for Germany. There are quite a few obstacles to perceiving the NAIRU as an understandable and easy-to-use analytical instrument, suitable for economic policy: the possibility of a non-vertical Phillips curve (e.g. in times of low in ation), the occurrence of shocks and hysteresis effects, the (mis-)measurement of important variables such as in ation expectations, cointegration issues, and a time variability of the NAIRU and its confidence intervals. Despite many serious caveats a new attempt is made to estimate a NAIRU for Germany based on conventional Phillips curves as well as on new approaches such as using direct measures of in ationary expectations, the Kalman filter method, and the residual-based bootstrap procedure (in order to estimate confidence intervals). However, by any method, simple or complex, the NAIRU is very hard to determine and subject to considerable arbitrariness. --NAIRU,unemployment,inflation,Phillips curve,natural rate,hysteresis,supply shocks,inflation expectations,Kalman filter,bootstrap

Real and monetary challenges to wage policy in Germany at the turn of the millenium : technical progress, globalisation and European Monetary Union ; the European unemployment problem

Lohnpolitik, Arbeitsmarkt, Deutschland, Wage policy, Labour market, Germany

The Reservation Wage of Unemployed Persons in the Federal Republic of Germany: Theory and Empirical Tests

This study examines the determinants of the reservation wage of unemployed persons in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1976. The theoretical section presents the derivation of an optimal reservation wage and shows the source of an ambiguity of some explanatory variables. The data basis are unemployed persons leaving the unemployment register within a given sample week. For a subset of them, we know their reservation wage and a set of personal characteristics. Other variables, such as the wage offer distribution and demand side variables, are obtained by employing other data. Methodological problems, such as as a sample selection bias, are taken into account. As a result, individual characteristics and the wage offer distribution are dominant causes of the reservation wage, but demand side variables and the entitlement to unemployment compensation play minor roles.

Exact Solutions of Bethe-Salpeter Equations with Instantaneous Interactions

The Bethe-Salpeter approach allows for quantum-field-theoretic descriptions of relativistic bound states; its inherent complexity, however, usually prevents to find its exact solutions. Under suitable simplifying assumptions about the systems discussed, we derive analytically some examples of rigorous solutions to the instantaneous homogeneous Bethe-Salpeter equation by relating tentative solutions to the interactions responsible for the formation of bound states.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures; v2: slightly augmented summary, matches version in PR