Using data from the 2006 wave of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes how a minimum wage affects employment, wage inequality, public expenditures, and aggregate income in the low-wage sector. It is shown that a statutory minimum wage of EUR 7.50 per hour would cost...

This paper concerns optimal redistributive income taxation and provision of a public input good in a two-type model with a minimum wage policy implemented for the low-ability type, where firms may use some of their resources for outsourcing by locating part of the production process abroad. Our...

Do minimum wages reduce in-work-poverty and wage inequality? Or can alternative policies do better? We evaluate theses issues for the exemplary case of Germany that suffers from high unemployment among low-skilled workers and rising wage dispersion at the bottom of the wage distribution. We...

We show that a minimum wage introduced in the presence of asymmetric information about worker productivities will lead to lower unemployment levels than predicted by the standard labour market model with heterogeneous labour and symmetric information.

Against the background of the current discussion on the introduction of statutory minimum wages in Germany, this paper analyzes the potential employment and fiscal effects of such a policy. Based on estimated labor demand elasticities obtained from a structural labor demand model, the empirical...

Staatliche Instrumente zur Beschäftigungsförderung und Einkommenssicherung im Niedriglohnbereich durch Kombilohn-Modelle existieren auch in Deutschland schon seit längerem und wurden im Zuge der jüngsten Arbeitsmarktreformen ausgeweitet. Diese haben das Ziel, durch eine einkommensabhängige...

The difference between the potential net wage income and the social welfare payments is measured for different types of private households in Germany. In 2001, the difference is small for households consisting of at least three persons. For three types of households the difference is calculated...

When reviewing the literature concerning the development of the Eastern German economy, a too rigid labor market and its respective institutions are considered as the main source of the persistent high unemployment rates and the slow economic performance. However, when important macroeconomic...

Although there is a large literature on the economic effects of minimum wages on labour market outcomes (especially employment), there is hardly any evidence on their impact on firm performance. This is surprising: minimum wages appear to have a significant impact on wages, but only a limited...

Living wage campaigns have succeeded in about 100 jurisdictions in the United States but have also been unsuccessful in numerous cities. These unsuccessful campaigns provide a better control group or counterfactual for estimating the effects of living wage laws than the broader set of all cities...