Over the last decades, the United States and other developed countries have experienced profound job polarization whereby employment in high-skill and low-skill occupations increased at the expense of employment in middle-skill occupations. This paper examines the wage effects of job...

In this paper we provide empirical evidence on the wage incidence of the German business tax, which is set at the municipal level. For our analysis, we use very rich administrative linked employer-employee panel data, covering 11 years, and link it to data on the business tax rates of about...

Using a representative establishment dataset, this paper analyzes the incidence of wage posting and wage bargaining in the matching process. We show that both modes of wage determination coexist in the German labor market, with about two-thirds of hirings being characterized by wage posting....

This paper investigates the behaviour of employers' monopsony power and workers' wages over the business cycle. Using German administrative linked employer--employee data for the years 1985--2010 and an estimation framework based on duration models, we construct a time series of the firm-level...

Reference prices constitute a main determinant of patient health care reimbursement in many countries. We study the effects of a change from an "external" (based on a basket of prices in other countries) to an "internal" (based on comparable domestic products) reference price system. We find...

This paper indicates that the extent of collective bargaining coverage in an industry may depend on the differences in firms productivity levels within the industry. Less pronounced differences in productivity levels make it easier to design collective wage contracts that are accepted by a wider...

When a key responsibility of a manager is to allocate more or less attractive tasks to subordinates, these subordinates have an incentive to work hard and demonstrate their talents. As a new manager is less well acquainted with these talents this incentive mechanism is reinvigorated after a...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and innovation. For the empirical analysis a unique firm-level data set is constructed that combines balance sheet data and an M&A database with information on patent applications....

The elasticity of business capital to changes in its user cost is central to the economic analysis of fiscal policies. As a major component, the user cost of capital includes a firm's marginal tax rate. Due to the asymmetric treatment of tax losses and profits, the marginal tax rate can depart...

Using a representative establishment data set for Germany, we show that, in line with the existing literature for several countries, fi rms' adjustment costs for employment are characterized by a fixed and convex functional form. Furthermore, they are asymmetric with dismissal costs exceeding...