Increasing work incentives for people with low incomes is a common topic in the policy debate across European countries. The "Mini-Job" reform in Germany - introduced on April 1, 2003 - can be seen in line with these policies, exempting labour income below a certain threshold from taxes and employees' social security contributions. We carry out an ex-post evaluation to identify the short-run effects of this reform. Our identification strategy uses an exogenous variation in the interview months in the German Socio-Economic Panel, that allows us to distinguish groups that are (or are not) affected by the reform. To account for seasonal effects we additionally use a difference-in-differences strategy. The results show that the short-run effects of the reform are limited. We find no significant short-run effects for marginal employment. However, there is evidence that single men who are already employed react immediately and increase secondary job holding.
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Paper provided by DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research in its series Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin with number
569.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Moffitt, Robert A., 2002.
"Welfare programs and labor supply,"
Handbook of Public Economics,
in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 34, pages 2393-2430
Elsevier.
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