East German wages have been below the West German wage level since unification. Moreover, the East-West wage gap implied by the contractual wages specified in collective wage agreements is drifting ever further apart from the wagegap in terms of effective wages. This paper looks at the role of...

After 20 years of transition from an economy integrated in an exchange scheme of planned economies towards an open market economy based on the ideas of competition, we ask whether East German firms succeeded in finding their place in the international division of labour. We concentrate on the...

It is argued that the observed return rates on capital at firm-level have an upward bias if firms are producing with unobserved intangible capital. Using EUKLEED, a comprehensive firm level data base for Germany, this theoretical preposition is proved empirically. Furthermore, making unobserved...

Using firm-level panel data from the German cost structure survey over the period 1992 to 2000, our empirical analysis shows that firms that increased material inputs relative to internal labor costs performed better in terms of gross operating surplus than other firms. However, firms that...

Es ist in der Wissenschaft nahezu einhellige Ansicht, daß die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit ostdeutscher Unternehmen durch zu hohe Lohnkosten beeinträchtigt wird. Zu diesem Urteil gelangt man, wenn man die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit eines Unternehmens an Hand des in makroökonomischen Analysen üblichen...

Previous research shows that technical progress at the industry level, measured by sectoral TFP growth, is more localized in continental European countries than in Anglo-Saxon countries. We use EU KLEMS data sets to decompose sectoral TFP for nine European countries by means of a Malmquist...

Trade theory and economic geography suggest that the removal of trade barriers is likely to bring about more economic specialisation and potentially more diverse development paths between countries and regions. Thus, the deepening and extending European integration should be accompanied by an...