This paper focuses on the entrepreneurial endeavors of immigrants and natives in Germany. We pay closer attention to Turks, since they are the largest immigrant group with a strong entrepreneurial tradition, and the self-employed Turks in Germany represent about 70% of all Turkish entrepreneurs...

The Kyrgyz Republic is one of the largest recipients of international remittances in the world; from a Balance of Payments measure of remittances, it ranked tenth in the world in 2008 in the ratio of remittances to GDP, a rapid increase from 30th place in 2004. Remittances can be used to maintain...

There is by now a lot of evidence showing a sharp increase in cross-sectional wage and earnings inequality during the 2000s in Germany. Our study is the first to decompose this cross-sectional variance into its permanent and transitory parts for years beyond 2000. Using data from the German...

This paper examines the impact of children on female wages in the UK using the National Child Development Study. Empirically this involves using an extension of the Roy model, which simultaneously corrects for the endogeneity of labour force participation and fertility. The wage differential...

This paper examines social agglomeration externalities. Using survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, I examine the link between city size and different measures of consumption, social interaction and social capital. Further, using responses to satisfaction questions, I analyse whether...

The efficiency of the labour market critically depends on the design of its institutions with employment protection legislation (EPL) playing a special role here. However, since formal laws can be observed or ignored to varying degrees, the actual enforcement regime shapes incentives and...

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...

This paper investigates the causal effect of geographic labour mobility on income. The returns to German East-West migration and commuting are estimated exploiting the structure of centrally planned economies and a "natural experiment" of German reunification for identification. I find that...

The Chinese growth miracle was based on exports and investment in recent years. While strong output growth has been maintained even during the financial crisis, the imbalances within the country increased. To return to a more sustainable path of development, policies are directed to improve the...

We analyze in this paper the impact of male-dominated migration and remittance income on the participation and hours worked decisions of adults left behind, including the hours spent by women in subsistence and domestic work. We differentiate between a 'pure' migration ("M") effect and the joint...