This paper provides a labour supply explanation to the observation that in Germany employment changes are asymmetric during the business cycle. Employment increases are slower, because the reservation wage of workers increases in times of job uncertainty. Workers are afraid in those periods of...

This paper explores whether investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) and firm?sponsored training programmes are complementary. Three approaches are applied to panel data from German service companies for the time period 1994?98. Results for a system of interrelated factor...

This paper investigates the evolution of wages and the recent tendency to rising wage inequality in Germany, based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for 1984 to 2004. Between 1984 and 1994 the wage distribution was fairly stable. Wage inequality started to increase around 1994 in...

This paper demonstrates that insiders can erect barriers to entry and skim rents by sinking costs in human capital when labour markets are otherwise perfectly contestable. The sunk costs nature of human capital investments may result from the need to satisfy ever increasing specialised skill...

The US labour market is characterized by a high skill wage mark-up and low unemployment, while the German labour market has a low skill wage mark-up and a high, mainly unskilled unemployment rate. This paper adds an innovative labour supply explanation to the discussion how these distinct labour...

The paper investigates the evolution of wages and wage inequality in Germany based on samples from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) 1984 to 2005. Real gross hourly wages for prime age dependent male workers increased on average by 23 percent between 1984 and 1994 in West Germany and the...

Um Hinweise für die Erträge von Investitionen in die Fähigkeiten von Kindern im Vorschulalter geben zu können, möchten wir in diesem Beitrag die Ergebnisse von Simulationen zur Diskussion stellen. Der Humankapitalerwerb wird als Funktion von kognitiven und nichtkognitiven Fähigkeiten...

The paper investigates the evolution of wages and wage inequality in Germany based on samples from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984 to 2005. Real gross hourly wages for prime age dependent male workers increased on average by 23 percent between 1984 and 1994 in West Germany and the...

A model is presented where workers of differing abilities and from different social backgrounds are assigned to jobs based on grades received at school. It is examined how this matching is affected if good grades are granted to some low ability students. Such grade inflation is shown to reduce...

There is an increasing economic literature considering personality. This paper provides an overview on the role of these skills regarding three main aspects of economic analysis: measurement, theoretical modeling, and empirical estimates. Based on the relevant literature from different...