The analogy between the economic problems of the Mezzogiorno region and East Germany has been initially contested by …

Following monetary union with west Germany in June 1990, the median real monthly wage of prime age east German workers …

Since monetary union with western Germany on 1 July 1990, eastern female monthly wages have risen by 10 percentage …

in east Germany …

Barro (1991), except that migration out of East Germany has not slowed down. I document that in particular the 18-29 year … old are leaving East Germany, and that the emigration has accelerated in recent years. I document that low wages, high … unemployment and increasing reliance on social security persist across wide regions of East Germany together with these migration …

using administrative data from Germany and find that highly productive firms indeed sort into the most productive locations …. In our main application, we quantify the role of firm sorting for wage differences between East and West Germany, which …