Labor market institutions, via their effect on the wage structure, affect the investment decisions of firms in labor markets with frictions. This observation helps explain rising wage inequality in the US, but a relatively stable wage structure in Europe in the 1980s. These different trends are...

This paper investigates how changing the length of the school year, leaving the basic curriculum unchanged, affects learning and subsequent earnings. I use variation introduced by the West-German short school years in 1966-67, which exposed some students to a total of about two thirds of a year...

Using data from the German Socio Economic Panel, I describe the incidence, attributes, and outcomes of continuous training received by workers in Germany between 1986 and 1989. Further training is primarily a white collar phenomenon, is concentrated among the more highly educated, and in the...

We estimate the impact of compulsory schooling on earnings using the changes in compulsory schooling laws for secondary schools in West German states during the period from 1948 to 1970. While our research design is very similar to studies for various other countries, we find very different...

Unions compress the wage distribution among workers covered by union contracts. We" ask whether unions also have an effect on the managers of unionized firms. To this end we" collected and assembled data on unionization and managerial pay within firms and industries in" the U.S. and across...

This paper has three goals; first, to place U.S. job growth in international perspective by exploring cross-country differences in employment and population growth. This section finds that the U.S. has managed to absorb added workers -- especially female workers -- into employment at a greater...

Are the large measured wage differentials associated with on-the-job computer use productivity gains or the result of unobserved heterogeneity? We examine this issue with three large cross-sectional surveys from Germany. First, we confirm that the estimated wage differentials associated with...

Germany has experienced a high and rising rate of anti-foreigner violence during the early 1990s. To analyze the determinants of crime against foreigners we assembled a new data set on the number and nature of such crimes at the county level based on newspaper reports. We find significant...

In 1988, the wage distribution in East Germany was much more compressed than in West Germany or the U.S. Since the collapse of Communism and unification with West Germany, however, the wage structure in eastern Germany has changed considerably. In particular, wage variation has increased, the...

This paper uses aggregate birth year/calendar year level data derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to estimate the effect of Social Security wealth on the labor supply of older men in the 1970s and 1980s. The analysis focuses on the 1977 amendments to the Social Security Act t which...