The effects of childbirth on future labor market outcomes are a key issue for policy discussion. This paper implements a dynamic treatment approach to estimate the effect of having the first child now versus later on future employment for the case of Germany, a country with a long maternity...

Abstract Union representation has been in strong decline in most OECD countries with potentially important consequences for wages. What drives this decline? We try to answer this question by developing and implementing a detailed Fairlie decomposition approach. Using linked employer-employee...

This paper investigates the increase in wage inequality, the decline in collective bargaining, and the evolution of the gender wage gap in West Germany between 2001 and 2006. Based on detailed linked employer-employee data, we show that wage inequality is rising strongly -- driven not only by...

Quantile regression has emerged as an essential statistical tool of contemporary empirical economics and biostatistics. Complementing classical least squares regression methods which are designed to estimate conditional mean models, quantile regression provides an ensemble of techniques for...

As the first, substantive contribution, this paper revisits the effectiveness of two widely used public sponsored training programs, the first one focusing on intensive occupational training and the second one on short-term activation and job entry. We use an exceptionally rich administrative...