This paper explores whether investments in information and communication technologies (ICT) and firm?sponsored training programmes are complementary. Three approaches are applied to panel data from German service companies for the time period 1994?98. Results for a system of interrelated factor...

This paper analyses whether wages in Germany respond to firm-specific profitability conditions. Particular emphasis lies on the question of whether the extent of rent-sharing varies across different systems of wage determination. Those may be categorised into sector-specific wage agreements,...

Wage and productivity effects of training are compared to study how the training rent is shared between employers and employees. With panel data from 1996-2002, I analyse the impact of continuing training on wages and productivity in a Cobb-Douglas production framework. Using system GMM...

Using a linked employer-employee data set, this paper analyses the relationship between firm-profitability and wages. Particular emphasis is given to the question of whether the sensitivity of wages to firm-specific rents varies with collective bargaining coverage. To address this issue, we...

This paper studies the relationship between wages and the degree of firm heterogeneity in a given industry under different wage setting structures. To derive testable hypotheses, we set up a theoretical model that analyses the sensitivity of wages to the variability in productivity conditions in...

Using information on family background, we estimate returns to education, allowing for the heterogeneity of returns. In order to control for the unobserved heterogeneity shared by family members, we construct a siblings sample and employ family fixed-effects and family correlated random-effects...

Using a linked employer-employee data set, this paper analyses the relationship between firm profitability and wages. Particular emphasis is given to the question of whether the sensitivity of wages to firm-specific rents varies with collective bargaining coverage. To address this issue, we...

This paper shows that earnings losses after unemployment increase with age. First, older employees start out with relatively high earnings in comparison to employees without employment interruptions several years before the non-employment spell. This earnings advantage turns into a strong...

The German apprenticeship training system is generally acknowledged to solve the youth unemployment problem prevalent in many European countries by providing on-the-job training that often leads into subsequent regular employment within the training firms. Little attention has been paid to those...

This paper studies the importance of employer-specific determinants in escaping low earnings in Germany. To address the initial conditions problem and the endogeneity of employer retention, we model (intra-firm) low-pay transitions using a multivariate Probit model that accounts for selection...