Nach der Öffnung der Mauer im Jahr 1989 setzten massive Wanderungen aus der ehemaligen DDR nach Westdeutschland ein. Zur Beurteilung der ökonomischen Konsequenzen solcher vereinigungsbedingter Arbeitsmobilität wird zunächst ein Referenzmodell entwickelt, das später durch Variationen der...

Mehr als 25 Jahre nach der Wiedervereinigung ist das deutsche Rentenrecht immer noch geteilt. Die gesetzlichen Renten werden für Ost- und Westdeutschland unterschiedlich berechnet. Doch die ursprüngliche Begründung der um ein Vielfaches niedrigeren Löhne im Osten kann heute nicht mehr...

Political regimes influence contents of education and criteria used to select and evaluate students. We study the impact of a socialist education on the likelihood of obtaining a college degree and on several labor market outcomes by exploiting the reorganization of the school system in East...

German reunication was a positive market access shock for both East and West Germany. Regions that for 45 years had experienced a decline in population due to their loss in market access following the division of Germany of WWII were most strongly affected by this positive shock. We use an...

We study the impact of social ties on the migration of inventors from East to West Germany, using the fall of the Iron Curtain and German reunification as a natural experiment. We identify East German inventors via their patenting track records prior to 1990 and their social security records in...

We develop a model of firm learning in volatile markets with noisy signals and test its predictions using historical German data. Firms' forecasts improve with age. We exploit German Reunification as a natural experiment where firms in the East are treated with ignorance about the distribution...