I investigate the relationship between the extensive margins of imports and exports (the number of countries traded with and the number of goods traded) and firm productivity using a newly constructed and rich panel data set of German manufacturing firms for the years 2009-2014. I do for the...

In many European countries, wages are determined by collective bargaining agreements intended to improve wages and reduce inequality. We study the local and aggregate effects of collective bargaining in Italy and Germany. The two countries have similar geographical differences in firm...

This paper evaluates the impact of public employment on private sector activity using the relocation of the German federal government from Berlin to Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous variation. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a simple economic...

New business formation plays an important role for economic development. Therefore, policy makers put emphasis on fostering start-up activity. Aims and scope of entrepreneurs can be just as heterogeneous as the structure of new ventures. The project "New business formation and the labor market...

Die Produktivitätsentwicklung ist für Deutschland ein Schlüsselfaktor für die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung. Doch was bedeutet Produktivität, wie wird sie beeinflusst und wie kann sie gemessen werden? Im Sprachgebrauch weist Produktivität einen engen Bezug zur menschlichen Arbeit auf,...

Nach der Öffnung der Mauer im Jahr 1989 setzten massive Wanderungen aus der ehemaligen DDR nach Westdeutschland ein. Zur Beurteilung der ökonomischen Konsequenzen solcher vereinigungsbedingter Arbeitsmobilität wird zunächst ein Referenzmodell entwickelt, das später durch Variationen der...

Ziel dieses Buches ist es, ost- und westdeutsche Wissensressourcen und Barrieren im Umgang miteinander aufzuzeigen. Mit Hilfe eines qualitativen Forschungsansatzes entwickelte der Autor ein interkulturelles Wissensmanagementmodell im Kontext Ost- und Westdeutschland. Dieses Modell unterstützt...

There is a large and successful literature exploiting the division and re-unification of Germany as a natural experiment for analysing the effects of political regimes on economic behaviour. This paper contributes to this literature by reassessing the role of legacy effects of socialist labour...

This study analyses how the long-term modernisation process as well as ups and downs of business cycles affect the entry of men into the labour market in West Germany and their career mobility. Combining longitudinal data from the German Life History Study and the ALWA study, we first...

After childbirth, women often interrupt their careers. These interruptions are associated with negative consequences for later employment, which are greatly influenced by the duration of the interruption. We analyse the influence of occupational characteristics on this duration, as occupations...

This paper studies the persistence of a large, unexpected, and regionally very unevenly distributed population shock, the inflow of eight million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II. Using detailed census data from 1939 to 1970, we show that the shock had a...

Shih-cheng Lien untersucht die Bedeutung der gestiegenen Frauenerwerbstätigkeit für die Veränderungen von Wohnstandort und räumlicher Mobilität. Mit Hilfe einer sekundärstatistischen Analyse des Sozioökonomischen Panels (SOEP) für die Jahre 1993 bis 2008 analysiert sie die zunehmende...

Over the course of higher education expansion and growing numbers of graduates, employers are supposed to have increasing difficulties to regard a higher education degree as reliable signal for productivity. As a consequence, they may take into account ‘qualitative’ differences such as...

By exploiting a commuting policy that led to a sharp and unexpected inflow of Czech workers to areas along the German-Czech border, we examine the impact of an exogenous immigration-induced labor supply shock on local wages and employment of natives. On average, the supply shock leads to a...

Sequences of active labour market programmes (ALMPs) may be part of an intensified activation strategy targeting hard-to-place individuals who may be long-term unemployed and who may encounter extreme difficulty in finding jobs. Such sequences are very common among welfare recipients in Germany,...

We estimate a dynamic life-cycle model of labor supply, fertility and savings, incorporating occupational choices, with specific wage paths and skill atrophy that vary over the career. This allows us to understand the trade-off between occupational choice and desired fertility, as well as the...