The German employment miracle in the Great Recession: the significance and institutional foundations of temporary working-time reductions

Herzog-Stein, Alexander; Lindner, Fabian; Sturn, Simon

doi:10.1093/oep/gpx047

Cited by 18 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Germany, by way of contrast, despite suffering its worst economic crisis of the post-war period, experienced a so-called 'employment miracle', ending the recession with even higher employment rates than before its onset. Herzog-Stein et al (2013) argue that the underlying reason for this success was the internal flexibility available to firms. More precisely, collective agreements enabled many employers to adjust to the economic circumstances by reducing their employees' working time according to an arrangement whereby workers would be paid for each hour worked and would, in addition, receive 60% of the net wage for every hour not worked.…”

Section: The Story Of Spain's Labour Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing facts and figures must be that the reform has not led to any significant movements in the direction of sharing working hours to prevent dismissals. The development of this practice, however, was the success factor of the so-called 'German employment miracle' (Herzog-Stein et al 2013). What this Spanish move -billed as improving internal flexibility -achieved instead was a severe reduction in wage levels.…”

Section: Effects Of Changes To Collective Bargainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spain's Labour Market Reforms: The Road to Employment Or to Unemployment?

Horwitz

Myant

2015

SSRN Journal

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Section: The Story Of Spain's Labour Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Effects Of Changes To Collective Bargainingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spain's Labour Market Reforms: The Road to Employment Or to Unemployment?

Horwitz

Myant

2015

SSRN Journal

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“…2. Herzog-Stein et al (2017) attribute the German employment miracle mainly to strong temporary working-time reductions (not only short-time work but also working-time accounts and discretionary reductions of regular working hours) by cushioning about 40% of the output shock. For some nuances on this perspective, see Brenke et al (2013) and Balleer et al (2016Balleer et al ( , 2017.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Do short-time work schemes help workers remain in the same firm?

Muñoz

García‐Serrano

Hernanz

2020

IJM

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PurposeThis paper investigates whether short-time work (STW) schemes were successful in their objective of maintaining employment and keeping workers employed within the same firms after the onset of the financial and economic crisis in 2008.Design/methodology/approachSpanish longitudinal administrative data has been used, making it possible to identify short-time work (STW) participation not only of workers but also of employers and allowing to know the future labour market status of participants and non-participants. Accordingly, treatment and control groups are defined, and Propensity Score Matching models estimated. The dependent variable is measured as the probability that an individual remained employed with the same employer in the future (one, two and three years) after implementation of a STW arrangement.FindingsOur results suggest that treated individuals are about 5 percentage points less likely to remain working with the same employer one year later than similar workers, and this negative effect of participation increases over time. Thus, STW schemes would not have the assumed effect of preventing unemployment by keeping the participants employed relative to non-participants.Research limitations/implicationsAs our analysis is based on the comparison of the employment trajectories of participant and non-participant workers in firms that have used STW arrangements, our findings cannot be interpreted as the job saving effects of either macro or micro studies carried out previously.Practical implicationsThe analysis carried out in the paper is complementary to the country-level and firm-level approaches that have been used in the empirical literature.Originality/valueWe adopt a worker-level approach. This is novel since no previous study has focused attention on the impact of STW participation on the subsequent labour market status of workers.

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“…Whereas some authors highlight the crucial role of short-time work to explain this exceptionally stable development in the labor market (e.g. Boeri and Bruecker 2011, Brenke et al 2013, Balleer et al 2013, others stress that two newly implemented working time instruments, working time accounts and discretionary variations in regular working time are equally or more important (Möller 2010, Herzog-Stein et al 2013). The first instrument allows to accumulate overtime-hours on a working time account, and to consume it in a later point in time.…”

Section: Work-sharing In the Great Recessionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work-sharing for a sustainable economy

Zwickl

Disslbacher

Stagl

2016

Ecological Economics

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Achieving low unemployment in an environment of weak growth is a major policy challenge; a more egalitarian distribution of hours worked could be the key to solving it. Whether worksharing actually increases employment, however, has been debated controversially. In this article we present stylized facts on the distribution of hours worked and discuss the role of work-sharing for a sustainable economy. Building on recent developments in labor market theory we review the determinants of working long hours and its effect on well-being. Finally, we survey work-sharing reforms in the past. While there seems to be a consensus that worksharing in the Great Depression in the U.S. and in the Great Recession in Europe was successful in reducing employment losses, perceptions of the work-sharing reforms implemented between the 1980s and early 2000s are more ambivalent. However, even the most critical evaluations of these reforms provide no credible evidence of negative employment effects; instead, the overall success of the policy seems to depend on the economic and institutional setting, as well as the specific details of its implementation.

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The German employment miracle in the Great Recession: the significance and institutional foundations of temporary working-time reductions

Cited by 18 publications

References 14 publications

Spain's Labour Market Reforms: The Road to Employment Or to Unemployment?

Spain's Labour Market Reforms: The Road to Employment Or to Unemployment?

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Do short-time work schemes help workers remain in the same firm?

Work-sharing for a sustainable economy

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