The Minimum wage in the roofing sector, which was introduced in 1997 and transferred to a national and generally binding level in 2003, has particularly affected the sector in Eastern Germany, even in an international comparison. However, the concomitant effective cost burden is limited. Based...

The tragedy of little Madeleine in 2007 did not only catch the headlines of the public media but was also followed with interest by researchers after the remarkably successful donation acquisition of the desperate parents. To finance a costly search for their taken daughter, they asked the...

This paper contributes to the sparse literature on employment spillovers on minimum wages by exploiting the minimum wage introduction and subsequent increases in the German roofing sector that gave rise to an internationally unprecedented hard bite of a minimum wage. We look at the chances of...

In this paper, we study how wage mobility in the low-wage sector has changed in western Germany between 1984 and 2004. Using German individual register data, we document a clear upward trend in the persistence of low-wage employment for both men and women. Next to compositional shifts of the...

This paper analyzes the evolution of wage inequality and wage mobility separately for men and women in West and East Germany over the last four decades. Using a large administrative data set which covers the years 1975 to 2008, I find that wage inequality increased and wage mobility decreased...