The paper explores wage setting practice in East Germany since unification. It gathers evidence for the claim that economically non-viable collective agreements have fostered decentralized wage setting. First, we document declining organization rates of both employers and employees, allowing...

The paper analyzes the labor market impact of migration by exploiting variation in the labor supply of foreigners across groups of workers with the same level of education but different work experience. Estimates on the basis of German register data for the period 1975-97 do not confirm the...

This paper calculates the net contribution of foreigners to the public coffers in Germany in fiscal year 2004. On the basis of profiles measuring the per capita payments by age and nationality, retrieved from the GSOEP for 33 different taxes and transfers including education, we observe that...

The paper surveys the state of German pension system after a sequence of reforms aimed at achieving long-term sustainability. We argue that the latest reforms have moved pension provision in Germany in principle from a defined benefit to a defined contribution scheme, and that this move has...