"Facing the recent German debate on the minimum wage, this paper analyses theoretical effects of minimum wages on employment and wage distribution under a frictional setting. I??review new developments in search theory and discuss the influence of the minimum wage on wages and employment under...

"Facing the recent German debate on the minimum wage, this paper analyses theoretical effects of minimum wages on employment and wage distribution under a frictional setting. I??review new developments in search theory and discuss the influence of the minimum wage on wages and employment under...

How valuable is education for entrepreneurs’ performance as compared to employees’?What might explain any differences? And does education affect peoples’ occupationalchoices accordingly? We answer these questions based on a large panel of US labor forceparticipants. We show that education...

This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

Die deutsche Vereinigung brachte für die Menschen das Versprechen einer baldigen „Angleichung der Lebensverhältnisse“ zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland. Zwar wurde recht schnell deutlich, dass gleiche (materielle) Lebensverhältnisse bestenfalls langfristig erreichbar sein würden;...

Für die Bürger in den neuen Bundesländern zeigt sich der Erfolg der Wiedervereinigung in hohem Maße in der Angleichung der Lebensverhältnisse mit den Einwohnern des früheren Bundesgebietes. Nach Berechnungen des ifo Instituts lag das um Kaufkraftunterschiede korrigierte Verhältnis der...

In diesem Beitrag wird der Zusammenhang zwischen Einkommensungleichheit und Beschäftigungswachstum untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass in Ländern, die über längere Zeit hinweg eine größere Einkommensungleichheit zuließen, auch eine Ausweitung von Beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten generiert...

There is no robust empirical support for the effect of financial incentives on the decision towork in self-employment rather than as a wage earner. In the literature, this is seen as apuzzle. We offer a focus on the opportunity cost, i.e. the wages given up as an employee.Information on income...

While results are starting to emerge, not much is known yet about the dynamics of the labormarkets of the former Eastern economies, especially in the context of the current FinancialCrisis. Arguably, this is mainly due to paucity of (panel) data. By examining labor markettransitions, earnings...