This book explores empirically for West Germany whether a decline in the relative demand for less skilled workers … resulted in increased unemployment. Using up-to-date econometric techniques, a balanced mixture between descriptive evidence … conventional wisdom about labor market trends in West Germany. Overall wage dispersion has been increasing and wage growth has been …

effects, low real wages and low unemployment are the result. With an intermediate view, i.e. when partial equilibrium effects … within a sector are taken into account, high real wages and unemployment result. If all general equilibrium effects are … simultaneously considered, we once again obtain a situation of low wages and unemployment. The assumption that unions and employers …

other industrial sectors, in agriculture, and in services, as well as unemployment and non-participation in the labor force …