After the German reunification, interregional subsidies accounted for approximately four percent of gross fixed capital investment in the new federal states. We show that between 1992 and 2005 infrastructure and (small) business aid had a negative net impact on regional economic growth. This...

In this paper employment effects of a sectoral minimum wage in the German construction sector are estimated from a single cross-sectional wage distribution using parametric and semi-parametric models. Parametric functional form assumptions seem too restrictive and lead to implausible results. We...

In this paper, the authors present a new approach to estimate the impact of a minimum wage on the labor market of the construction sector in Germany. Instead of estimating the effect on employment, the authors focus on the change of prices on a firm level in order to differentiate between a...

This paper analyses the effects of minimum wages on competition in the German roofing sector. The case is particularly interesting since this sector is faced with a uniform minimum wage despite significant regional disparities in productivity and wages. As a control industry we take the plumbing...

A political miracle occurred when Germany was reunited, and at first glance an economic miracle has followed. Real incomes in the east have now reached the western level, and investment per capita has been much higher than in the w est. However, every third deutschmark spent in the east has been...

The very first minimum wage in Germany was introduced in 1997 for blue-collar workers in sub-sectors of the construction industry. In the setting of a natural experiment blue-collar workers in neighboring 4-digit-industries and white-collar workers are used as control groups for...