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This paper aims to present the IZA Evaluation Dataset, a newly created data source allowing for the evaluation of active labor market policies in Germany.

The paper's approach is a description of the sampling and contents of the IZA Evaluation Dataset and an outline of its research potential.

The evaluation of active labor market policies is often confronted with a lack of adequate empirical data. The IZA Evaluation Dataset may serve as a role model for the provision of such data.

The scope of active labor market policy instruments that can be analyzed with the IZA Evaluation Dataset is mainly restricted to measures for unemployed individuals.

In recent years, many countries have opened their administrative databases for evaluation studies. However, information that might be relevant for economic modeling is often absent. The IZA Evaluation Dataset aims to overcome such limitations for Germany by complementing administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency with innovative survey data.

This paper aims to analyze the role of social networks on the job search choices of the unemployed. If social networks convey useful information in the job search process, individuals with larger networks should experience a higher productivity of informal search channels. This in turn affects the choice of formal search intensity and the reservation wage. The paper seeks to test these search‐theoretic implications of productive social networks empirically.

The authors use the IZA Evaluation Dataset containing detailed information on job search behavior of recently unemployed individuals. Observing a rich array of personality traits and direct measures of the social network, the authors choose an identification approach based on observable characteristics using least squares and binary probit regression analysis.

The findings confirm theoretical expectations. Individuals with larger networks use informal search channels more often and shift from formal to informal search. In addition to that, evidence is found for a positive relationship between network size and reservation wages.

The extent to which networks are used during job search most likely also depends on the quality of the network, which cannot be observed in the data. However, as the network significantly changes the observable formal job search effort of individuals, public job search monitoring policies should take these effects into account.

The paper complements the previous body of literature on the role of social networks in the labor market that predominantly focuses on labor market outcomes. By highlighting the interaction between networks and job search choices the paper improves the understanding of realized labor market outcomes in the presence of networks.

How individuals allocate their time between work and leisure has important implications regarding worker well-being. For example, more time at work means a greater return to human capital and a greater proclivity to seek more training opportunities. At the same time, hours spent at work decrease leisure and depend on one's home environment (including parental background), health, past migration, and government policies. In short, worker well-being depends on trade-offs and is influenced by public policy. These decisions entail time allocation, effort, human capital investment, health, and migration, among other choices. This volume considers worker well-being from the vantage of each of these alternatives. It contains ten chapters. The first three are on time allocation and work behavior, the next three on aspects of risk in the earnings process, the next two on aspects of migration, the next one on the impact of tax policies on poverty, and finally the last chapter on the role of labor market institutions on sectoral shifts in employment.

Who works, how much one works, and what one earns are the cornerstones of labor economics. However, determining the answers to these questions can be tricky because many factors are involved in estimating labor supply, explaining the implications of labor demand, and determining the resulting earnings. This volume contains 13 chapters on these components of the labor market. Five deal directly with labor supply; four deal with labor demand, most notably the effect of cyclical demand fluctuations; and the remaining four deal with compensation, particularly wages, wage distributions, and fringe benefits.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the job search probability in welfare receipt over time for men and women in different household constellations, because it is a major concern in welfare states that long-term receipt is driven by recipients’ low job search activity.

The paper analyses the likelihood to search for a job for a sample of unemployed recipients of means-tested welfare benefits in Germany. Data basis is the panel study “Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS), and growth curve models are applied in this study.

Job search probability differs by household constellation and gender directly after the onset of welfare receipt; differences are less distinct for changes in job search probability over time. Only welfare recipients without children show a pronounced decline in search probability.

There is no evidence that welfare recipients’ overall cease to search for a job by and by. Financial incentives alone cannot stimulate the job search of welfare recipients, when the diverse motives of male and female recipients in various household constellations are not considered as well.

This paper is the first to study the long-term development in the job search probability and gender differences by household constellations.