Using individual income data from university archives, we look at the development of professorial salaries over a time-span covering the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich as well as the Federal Republic of Germany. We find that relative salaries have fallen dramatically, both...

We analyze the effect of workforce composition by birthplace on workers' wages. In our model, each worker's productivity may depend on whether co-workers are of the same or of a different birthplace. Wages depend both on the relative size of workers' groups as well as on the production structure...

We study the role of establishment-specific wage premiums in generating recent increases in West German wage inequality. Models with additive fixed effects for workers and establishments are fit in four sub-intervals spanning the period from 1985 to 2009. We show that these models provide a good...

In this paper I investigate the causal returns to education for different educational groups in Germany. I circumvent potential drawbacks of IV by employing a new method by Klein and Vella (2010). In this approach identification is not based on instruments but on the presence of...

What is the value of basic skills in the German labor market which until recently was considered to be strongly regulated but has gained flexibility in the last 15 years? To answer this question, we examine the relationship between adults' literacy, numeracy and earnings. We use data from the...

This paper examines the determinants of gross labour flows in a context where modeling the migration decision as a wage-maximizing process may be inadequate due to regional wage rigidities that result from central wage bargaining. In such a context, the framework that has been developed by...

This paper reports the effects of training participation on wages and perceived job security for employees of different ages. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, results indicate that only younger workers benefit from training by an increase in wages, whereas older employees...

I test some predictions of Gary Becker’s theory of taste discrimination regarding discrimination of foreigners by employers, co-workers and customers. I combine a 2% sample of the German working population and a 50% sample of German plants with low-level regional data, including the vote...

The enlargement of the European Union in 2004 caused a large migration wave from Central Europe to Ireland and the UK. This paper addresses the question whether such an emigration wave changes the wage distribution in the source country. In a theoretical model of a labor market I show that some...

We estimate the effects on wage and employment growth rates of the introduction and subsequent increases of the minimum wage in the main construction industry of Germany. Using a regional dataset constructed from individual employment histories, we exploit the spatial dimension and border...