We use a large linked employer-employee data set to analyze the importance of relativewage positions in the context of individual quit decisions as an inverse measure of jobsatisfaction. Our main findings are: (1) Workers with higher relative wage positionswithin their firms are on average more...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) we study whether being individually affected by downward wage rigidity has an effect on layoffs, quits and intra-firm mobility. Within a structural empirical model we estimate the individual extent of wage rigidity. This is expressed by the...

When the centre-left government came into power in Germany in 1998, a core promise of the new Chancellor, Schroeder, was to reduce the lack of jobs and to increase welfare. Facing persistently increasing unemployment rates from then on, the government finally launched “Hartz IV” in 2004; the...

Die Zahl der Existenzgründungen belief sich nach Berechnungen des IfMBonn1 auf Basis der Gewerbeanzeigenstatistik2 in Deutschland im 1. bis 3.Quartal 2009 auf rund 313.000 (siehe Abbildung 1). Verglichen mit dem Vorjahrist die Zahl der Existenzgründungen damit um 1,8 % gestiegen (siehe...

Human capital and deferred compensation might explain why firms employ but do nothire older workers. Adjustments of wage-tenure profiles for older new entrants areexplored in the context of deferred compensation. From an equity theory perspective,such adjustments might lead to adverse incentive...

In recent years layoffs have increasingly become the focus of public attention. So far, however, there has been no representative study for Germany of how far and under what conditions layoffs are acceted by the population - in other wordss by people who are not immediately affected. [...]