This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

Die zunehmende Erwerbsbeteiligung von Frauen und die Ausbreitung "atypischer" Beschäftigungsverhältnisse hat zur Folge, dass der Anteil an Haushalten, in denen der Mann der alleinige Ernährer der Familie ist, abnimmt und der Anteil an Zweiverdienerhaushalten seit Jahren ansteigt. Vor diesem...

Die Ungleichheit der Arbeitnehmereinkünfte hat seit Mitte der 90er Jahre immer weiter zugenommen, wovon insbesondere der jahrelang wachsende Niedriglohnsektor betroffen war. Dieser Trend wurde im jüngsten konjunkturellen Beschäftigungsaufbau, der im Frühjahr 2006 einsetzte, jedoch gebrochen....

Ein erklärtes Ziel der deutschen Wirtschaftspolitik direkt nach der deutschen Vereinigung bestand in einer möglichst schnellen Angleichung der innerdeutschen Lebensverhältnisse. Die persönlichen Bruttoeinkommen der Ost- und Westdeutschen haben sich in den ersten zehn Jahren tatsächlich...

The economics profession has made considerable progress in understanding the increase in wage inequality in the U.S. and the UK over the past several decades, but currently lacks a consensus on why inequality did not increase, or increased much less, in (continental) Europe over the same time...

EU-TE trade is increasingly characterized by intra-industry trade. For some countries (Czech Republic), the share of intra-industry trade in total trade with the EU approaches 60 percent. The decomposition of intra-industry trade into horizontal and vertical shares reveals overwhelming vertical...

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing controversy on the distributional effects of structural reforms in developing countries. Applying inequality indices and Fields' (2001) decomposition methodology to Bolivian household survey data of the years 1989 to 1997, we identify recent trends...

The March Current Population Survey (CPS) is the primary data source for estimation of levels and trends in labor earnings and income inequality in the USA. Time-inconsistency problems related to top coding in theses data have led many researchers to use the ratio of the 90th and 10th...

This paper surveys the empirical literature on the association between growth on inequality in less developed countries, with a particular emphasis on labor market inequality. Crosscountry studies failed to find a clear link from growth to inequality. Country-specific studies that focused on...

This paper reviews Jacob Mincer?s contributions to the analyses of earnings and the distribution of earnings through his pioneering focus on labor market experience or on-the-job training. It begins with a brief discussion of the theoretical literature on the distribution of earnings in the...