TY - GEN A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Hogenacker, Jens T1 - The German labor market after the Great Recession BT - successful reforms and future challenges T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - The reaction of the German labor market to the Great Recession 2008/09 was relatively mild – especially compared to other countries. The reason lies not only in the specific type of the recession – which was favorable for the German economy structure – but also in a series of labor market reforms initiated between 2002 and 2005 altering, inter alia, labor supply incentives. However, irrespective of the mild response to the Great Recession, there are a number of substantial future challenges the German labor market will soon have to face. Female labor supply still lies well below that of other countries and a massive demographic change over the next 50 years will have substantial effects on labor supply as well as the pension system. In addition, due to a skill-biased technological change over the next decades, firms will face problems of finding employees with adequate skills. The aim of this paper is threefold. First, we outline why the German labor market reacted in such a mild fashion, describe current economic trends of the labor market in light of general trends in the European Union, and reveal some of the main associated challenges. Thereafter, the paper analyzes recent reforms of the main institutional settings of the labor market which influence labor supply. Finally, based on the status quo of these institutional settings, the paper gives a brief overview of strategies to combat adequately the challenges in terms of labor supply and to ensure economic growth in the future. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 129 KW - unemployment KW - labor force participation KW - Labor supply KW - benefit systems KW - public policy Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-435195 SN - 1867-5808 IS - 129 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Orland, Andreas A1 - Rostam-Afschar, Davud T1 - Flexible work arrangements and precautionary behavior BT - Theory and experimental evidence JF - Journal of economic behavior & organization N2 - In the past years, work-time in many industries has become more flexible, opening up a new channel for intertemporal substitution: workers might, instead of saving, adjust their work-time to smooth consumption. To study this channel, we set up a two-period consumption/saving model with wage uncertainty. This extends the standard saving model by also allowing a worker to allocate a fixed time budget between two work-shifts. To test the comparative statics implied by these two different channels, we conduct a laboratory experiment. A novel feature of our experiments is that we tie income to a real-effort style task. In four treatments, we turn on and off the two channels for consumption smoothing: saving and time allocation. Our main finding is that savings are strictly positive for at least 85 percent of subjects. We find that a majority of subjects also uses time allocation to smooth consumption and use saving and time shifting as substitutes, though not perfect substitutes. Part of the observed heterogeneity of precautionary behavior can be explained by risk preferences and motivations different from expected utility maximization. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. KW - Precautionary saving KW - Labor supply KW - Intertemporal substitution KW - Experiment Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.09.015 SN - 0167-2681 SN - 1879-1751 VL - 191 SP - 442 EP - 481 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -