During the last two decades, the labour demand structure in Germany has experienced a decrease in the demand for the low skilled. Possible explanations for this trend are investigated in this study for West Germany (1994- 1997) using a unique linked employer-employee panel data set for Germany....

Hardly noticed in Western Europe the fall of the Iron Curtain had also ef-fects on the regional structures of the labour markets in the Central and Eastern Euro-pean Countries (CEEC). I analyse whether during the undoubtedly increasing integration of markets the Czech border region close to the...

Using the IAB Employment Sample (IABS) covering 1980-2001 we investigate what impact the fall of the Iron Curtain has had on the skill structure of employment and wages in the western German districts neighbouring the Czech Republic. The introduction of free trade in this region, which has one...

We analyze the evolution of the exporter wage premium (EWP) during the Great Recession and the resulting impact on wage inequality in Germany. Our results show that the EWP declined sharply between 2007 and 2008 and stagnated afterwards. This pattern is due to exporters starting to adjust their...

This paper sets up a general oligopolistic equilibrium model with multi-product firms and union wage setting in a subset of industries. By claiming a wage premium, labor unions enforce a decline in firm scale and scope and thus dampen industrial output, with negative feedback effects on the...

In recent decades, many countries experienced both a rise in top income shares and an increase of income inequality among the top earners. In this paper, I study the role of international trade as a catalyst for this development and analyze the associated welfare effects. I build a simple...

This paper looks inside the firm and investigates how trade alters the matching of worker-specific abilities and task-specific skill requirements. The outcome of this matching depends on how firms organize their recruitment process and how much they invest into the screening of applicants. In...

The scarcity of talent is a tremendous challenge for firms in the globalized world. This paper investigates the role of labor market imperfection in open economies for the usage of talent in the production process of firms. For this purpose, I set up a heterogeneous firms model, where production...

This paper studies the effect of an expansion of imported intermediate inputs on establishments’ average task intensities and employment size in a middle-income country. I use confidential matched employer-employee data and information on trade transactions for the universe of Brazilian firms....

This paper sets up a general oligopolistic equilibrium model with unionized labor markets. By accounting for productivity dierences, the model features prot and wage dierentials across industries. We use this setting to study the impact of trade liberalization on employment, welfare, and the...