We provide novel evidence on the impact of a child's health shock on parental labor market outcomes. To identify the causal effect, we leverage long panels of high-quality Finnish and Norwegian administrative data and exploit variation in the timing of the health shock. We do this by comparing...

The purpose of this paper is two fold. First, to estimate, using structural methods, the extent to which capital flows undermined West German monetary policy during the Bretton Woods years 1960 to 1970 and second, to show that earlier reduced form estimates of the capital-account offset...

In 1994, Blanchflower and Oswald reported that they have found an "empirical law of economics" - the Wage Curve. According to their empirical results, the elasticity of wages with respect to regional unemployment is -0.1. This holds especially for the Anglo-Saxon countries. Our paper reconsiders...

Using data from the social survey ALLBUS for West Germany in the period 1980 to 2006, this paper demonstrates that union members are on average older than non-unionized employees. The probability of being unionized shows the inverted U-shaped pattern in age conjectured by Blanchflower (BJIR...

Physical stature is used as a proxy for the biological standard of living in the two Germanies before and after unification in an analysis of a cross-sectional sample (1998) of adult heights, as well as among military recruits of the 1990s. West Germans tended to be taller than East Germans...

A political miracle occurred when Germany was reunited, and at first glance an economic miracle has followed. Real incomes in the east have now reached the western level, and investment per capita has been much higher than in the west. However, every third deutschmark spent in the east has been...

Survey data from the United States, West Germany and East Germany are analyzed to compare individual attitudes towards political redistribution in each country. In West Germany the homo oeconomicus effect, the social rivalry effect and the public values effect simultaneously retain an...

Recent years have witnessed a rise in right-wing extremism among German youth and young adults. This paper investigates the extent to which the experience of parental unemployment during childhood affects young people's far right-wing attitudes and xenophobia. Estimates from three different...

Although economic agents routinely face various types of economic uncertainty, their effects are often unclear and hard to assess, in part due to the absence of suitable measures of uncertainty. Because of the numerous and very substantial institutional changes that people in the transition...

German post-unification in the 1990s is a period that was marked by substantial economic change, part of which was East German wages building towards the much higher West German levels. This paper studies the public-private pay gap in the fast changing economic and political environment of the...

This paper examines the relative savings position of migrant households in West Germany, paying particular attention to differences between temporary and permanent migrants. Utilizing household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), our findings reveal significant differences...

Determining the optimal age at which a child should enter school is a controversial topic in education policy. In particular, German policy makers, pedagogues, parents, and teachers have since long discussed whether the traditional, established age of school entry at 6 years remains appropriate....

Since the inequality of earnings in East Germany has approached West German levels in the late 1990s, the standard Roy model predicts that a positive selection bias of East-West migrants should disappear. Using a switching regression model and data from the IAB employment sample, we find however...

What are the long-term effects of Communism on economically relevant notions such as social trust? To answer this question, we use the reunification of Germany as a natural experiment and study the post-reunification trajectory of convergence with regard to individuals’ trust and risk, as well...

We apply German Mikrozensus data for the period 1996 to 2004 to investigate the employment status of mothers. Specifically, we ask whether there are behavioral differences between mothers in East and West Germany, whether these differences disappear over time, and whether there are differences...

What is the role of politics in shaping attitudes about appropriate roles for women in the family and the compatibility of work and motherhood? In this paper we argue that the German separation and later reunification produced a natural experiment to address this question. During the divided...

In this paper we conduct a counterfactual analysis and estimate the quantitative importance of demand and supply effects on wage inequality in Germany using a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Auerbach-Kotlikoff (1987) type. Specifically, the methodological contribution...

An empirical analysis of various waves of the ALLBUS social survey shows that union density fell substantially in West Germany from 1980 to 2000. Such a negative trend can be observed for men and women and for different groups of the workforce. Repeated crosssectional analyses suggest that a...

An empirical analysis of various waves of the ALLBUS social survey shows that the level and the structure of unionization has become more and more similar in eastern and western Germany in the period 1992 to 2000. The originally high level of union density in eastern Germany has dropped below...

We construct a unique data set to analyze whether or not a large temporary shock had an impact on German city growth and city size distribution. Following recent work by Davis and Weinstein (2001) on Japan, we take the strategic bombing of German cities during WWII as our example of such a...

We study an overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation with threshold effects using regional data for West Germany. Our basic goal is to shed light on what makes German regions grow. The paper finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a trimodal...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes the dynamics of equivalent income in Germany in the eighties and nineties. Special emphasis is given to the separation of permanent and transitory components, the persistence of transitory shocks and their implications...

This paper documents whether female East-West migrants in Germany after the reunification experience a gain or a disadvantage after they moved compared to both stayers and males. It employs panel data techniques to take account of unobserved heterogeneity. I find that migrant women after...

Using unique new data and a recently introduced non-linear decomposition technique this paper shows that the huge difference in the propensity to export between West and East German plants is to a large part due to differences in firm size and human capital intensity

The fraction of works councillors belonging to a trade union in Germany is much higher than union density among employees. If works councils represent the face of unions, union membership of employees should be related positively to the existence of works councils and their proximity to unions....

This paper provides a comparison of tax morale between inhabitants of East and West Germany in its post-reunification period, using three World Values Survey/European Values Survey waves between 1990 and 1999. German reunification is particularly interesting for the analysis of tax morale as it...

Wie ist der Stand der Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern auf den Arbeitsmärkten in West- und Ostdeutschland 30 Jahre nach der Wiedervereinigung? Zwar liegt mittlerweile eine nennenswerte Anzahl von Studien vor, die die Geschlechterungleichheit auf dem Arbeitsmarkt für Deutschland in vielen...

Work and family life arrangements differed greatly between the east and west before German reunification in 1990. Since reunification, however, the employment rates of mothers with children requiring childcare have converged. This trend is accompanied by a growing approval of maternal...

Italy and Germany have similar geographical differences in productivity - North more productive than South in Italy; West more productive than East in Germany - but have adopted different models of wage bargaining. Italy sets wages based on nationwide contracts that allow for limited local wage...

Italy and Germany have similar geographical differences in productivity – North more productive than South in Italy; West more productive than East in Germany – but have adopted different models of wage bargaining. Italy sets wages based on nationwide contracts that allow for limited local...

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...

Some rural regions in Western Germany have experienced a very positive economic development in terms of employment and incomes in the past decade. This development, however, is in sharp contrast to the the enduring economic lag of many rural regions in Eastern Germany. This paper seeks to find...

Evaluating real convergence or divergence in the EU is challenging because it is diffi cult to fi nd an appropriate counterfactual or comparison benchmark, or to formulate one. Should we compare the status quo with convergence that would have been obtained had the European Union (EU) never...

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...

The reintegration of young welfare recipients into the labor market is a major policy goal in many European countries. In this context monitoring and sanctions are important policy tools. In this paper, we analyze the impact of strict sanctions on job search outcomes for young welfare recipients...

We develop a general equilibrium model of frictional labor reallocation across firms and regions, and use it to quantify the aggregate and distributional effects of spatial frictions that hinder worker mobility across regions in Germany. The model leverages matched employer-employee data to...

"Wer nicht mit uns geht, sondern mit den reaktionären Kräften, wird in unserer Zone rücksichtslos liquidiert und vernichtet ...", so der SED-Chef von Leipzig, Lohagen, am 9. Oktober 1947. Die Devise der Stalinisten der ersten Stunde war deutlich. In der Folge verschwanden viele erfolgreiche...