Regionale Arbeitsmarktforschung im IAB (Regional labour market research in the IAB)

"Institutionalised in its own working group, the IAB carries out regional research in order to obtain findings about the development of regional disparities and about the way regional labour markets work. This research also helps in the analysis and discussion of regional labour market policy and finally contributes to gaining general knowledge in labour market and employment research. The research work is orientated towards theory, it is application-related and interdisciplinary. The theoretical approaches that are taken as a basis follow recent work in economics, amongst other things the 'New Economic Geography', and parallel approaches of other social sciences. These are integrated with regional implementations of approaches on structural change and on the link between the unemployment rate and the wage level. The methods used include multivariate techniques of panel analysis, multilevel analysis and entropy optimisation. The data basis depends heavily on the mass data of the IAB, e.g. from the employment and labour market statistics. It is organised in a special module of the Institute's new labour market information system, in ABIS-Reg. This paper provides an overview of the conception of the IAB's regional research with regard to the theories and methods used. This is followed by a brief description of viewpoints and key results of projects in the IAB's regional research, e.g. on labour market development in the new Länder, on the regional labour force participation and mobility, on regional integration results and on the effects of regional unemployment on wages." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))