"Based on the two IAB establishment surveys - the IAB Establishment Panel and the IAB Job Vacancy Survey - this report sheds light on the German labour market from the firms' perspective and gives information about the labour demand and resulting skills shortages for the years 2006 to 2012. With...

"The aim of this study is to analyze impacts of the introduction of the minimum wage in the German construction sector on wages and employment using micro data. The introduction of the minimum wage in 1997, which is binding for all blue-collar workers, is related to the Worker Posting Law....

"Based on the Linked-Employer-Employee data from the IAB (LIAB) we show how the horizontal occupational segregation of men and women in German establishments developed between 1996 and 2005. For this purpose we apply the dissimilarity index and the standardized dissimilarity index at the...

"'Marginal employment', i. e. employment with low working hours and earnings not covered by social security, has been gaining importance in the German economy over the past decade. Using a large newly available panel data set from the Employment Statistics of the Federal Employment Agency and...

"This study uses recent data taken from the German Socio-Economic Panel (2002-2006) to evaluate the extent of and heterogeneity in returns to tenure for men in eastern and western Germany, employed in both the private and the public sector. We find significantly different wage patterns in...

"'The vitality and stability of our democracy - as well as the economy - eventually depend on the social permeability of our society.' (Horst Köhler, German Federal President, 29. 12. 2007, authors' own translation) This statement draws attention to the strong meritocratic beliefs concerning...

"The prevalence of opening clauses in collective bargaining agreements may indicate a tendency towards more decentralised wage setting. Increasing competition on international product markets is assumed to be one reason for the decentralisation of collective bargaining. Current theoretical...

"This article uses the total population of firms, as contained in the Employee History ('Beschäftigten-Historik') of the IAB, to analyse the dynamics of employment in establishments of different size classes. This analysis is therefore the first of its kind to include all economic sectors for...

"The labor markets of most industrialized countries are polarized. This means that employment has grown in jobs at the upper and lower tails of the wage distribution, while employment in the middle part of the distribution has stagnated or declined. However, there exists no measure that allows a...

"A major unemployment and welfare benefit reform took place in Germany in 2005. One objective of this reform was to more strongly encourage an adult worker model of the family, with an emphasis on activating the formerly inactive. Our hypothesis is, however, that assignments to activation...