Acronyms and Abbreviations List of Tables List of Figures Ackknowledgement

1 Introduction 1.1 The increased demand for labour flexibility 1.2 Regional mobility in the job search process 1.3 The role of experiments 1.4 Contribution of this thesis

2 Regional mobility of unemployed workers in the wake of the German Hartz reforms 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The German Hartz reforms 2.3 Mobility requirements in the run-up to the Hartz reforms 2.4 Regional job search theory and the Hartz reform 2.5 Literature review 2.6 Data set 2.7 Difference-in-differences approach 2.8 Results 2.9 Conclusion Appendices 2.A Appendix

3 Unemployment and willingness to accept job offers: initial results of a factorial survey approach 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Theory and hypotheses 3.3 Literature review 3.4 Data and methods 3.5 Results 3.6 Discussion and outlook

4 The role of social capital in the job-related regional mobility decisions of unemployed individuals 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Review of the literature 4.3 Theoretical background and hypotheses 4.4 Data and methods 4.5 The double hurdle model 4.6 Variables and operationalisation 4.7 Results 4.8 Conclusion and discussion Appendices 4.A Supplementary data

Conclusion References Abstract Kurzfassung