This paper uses the immigration sample of the German Socioeconomic Panel to analyse the earnings and unemployment assimilation of ethnic Germans who entered West Germany within the last ten years. The empirical analysis suggests that there is no earnings differential between immigrants from...

This Paper uses a German employer-employee matched panel dataset to investigate the effect of organizational and technological changes on gross job and worker flows. The empirical results indicate that organizational change is skill-biased because it reduces predominantly net employment growth...

This paper analyses the determinants and timing of return migration. Special attention is given to the role of social and informational migration networks. A simple theoretical model of temporary migration demonstrates that the effect of migration networks on optimal migration duration is...

Empirical studies in the migration literature have shown that migration enclaves (networks) negatively affect the language proficiency of migrants. These studies, however, ignore the choice of location as a function of language skills. Using data on Mexican migration to the US, we show that...

Based on a large employer-employee matched dataset, the Paper investigates the effects of variable enforcement of German dismissal protection legislation on the employment dynamics in small establishments. Specifically, using a difference-in-differences approach, we study the effect of changes...

We examine the dynamic role of education and experience as determinants of wages. It is hypothesized that an employee's education is an important signal to the employer initially. Over time, the returns to schooling should decrease with labour market experience and increase with initially...

The Paper examines real and nominal wage rigidities. We estimate a switching regime model, in which the observed distribution of individual wage changes, computed from West German register data for 1976-97, is generated by simultaneous processes of real, nominal or no wage rigidity, and...

In this paper, a decomposition method for Tobit-models is derived, which allows the differences in a censored outcome variable between two groups to be decomposed into a part that is explained by differences in observed characteristics and a part attributable to differences in the estimated...

Using data for the 1990s, this Paper examines the role of sheepskin effects in the returns to education for Japan. Our estimations indicate that sheepskin effects explain about 50% of the total returns to schooling. We further find that sheepskin effects are only important for workers in small...

This Paper provides a descriptive analysis of the demand for high-skilled workers using a new firm dataset, the IZA International Employer Survey 2000. Our results suggest that while workers from EU countries are mainly complements to domestic high-skilled workers, workers from non-EU countries...