The German unemployment since the Hartz reforms: Permanent or transitory fall?

Gaëtan Stephan (1) , Julien Lecumberry (1)

1 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management

The Hartz reforms were designed to make the German labor market more flexible in order to reverse the increasing trend of unemployment. This paper employs unobserved components models in order to distinguish permanent from transitory movements in the German unemployment rate. Our results show that the permanent component of the German unemployment was reduced in the range of 1.1 and 2.6 percentage points after the Hartz reforms.

Mots clés: business cycle; unobserved components; Hartz reforms

Domaines: Economies et finances; Gestion et management

Gaëtan Stephan, Julien Lecumberry. The German unemployment since the Hartz reforms: Permanent or transitory fall?. Economics Letters, 2015, 136, pp.49-54. ⟨10.1016/j.econlet.2015.08.003⟩. ⟨halshs-01238494⟩