Using the location of baroque opera houses as a natural experiment, Falck et al. (2011) claim to document a positive causal effect of the supply of cultural goods on today’s regional distribution of talents. This paper raises serious doubts on the validity of the identification strategy...

This paper uses the immigration sample of the German Socioeconomic Panel to analyse the earnings and unemployment assimilation of ethnic Germans who entered West Germany within the last ten years. The empirical analysis suggests that there is no earnings differential between immigrants from...

This Paper uses a German employer-employee matched panel dataset to investigate the effect of organizational and technological changes on gross job and worker flows. The empirical results indicate that organizational change is skill-biased because it reduces predominantly net employment growth...

This paper analyses the determinants and timing of return migration. Special attention is given to the role of social and informational migration networks. A simple theoretical model of temporary migration demonstrates that the effect of migration networks on optimal migration duration is...

This paper examines the relative savings position of migrant households in West Germany, paying particular attention to differences between temporary and permanent migrants. Utilizing household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), our findings reveal significant differences...

Using a large new data set, we analyse the labour market performance of Portuguese workers in Germany. While previous work compares wages and characteristics of migrants only to those of natives, we match the data also with an equivalent survey from the sending country. We find that Portuguese...

A growing theoretical and empirical literature is concerned with the effects of flexible workplace systems or High Performance Work Organizations (HPWOs) on wages. Existing theoretical literature suggests that these forms of organization should lead to higher inequality across firms, increased...

The paper evaluates the potential gains from labour immigration for the European Union. After a review of the East-West migration problem and recent western migration policies, governmentally controlled labour immigration is studied in a framework with unions, unemployment and heterogenous...

Using standard as well as recently developed univariate and bivariate count data models, this paper analyses the determinants of workplace accidents using a firm data set for Germany. Given the tight system of public workplace safety regulation, introduced partly as early as in 1869 and the...

Based on a large employer-employee matched dataset, the Paper investigates the effects of variable enforcement of German dismissal protection legislation on the employment dynamics in small establishments. Specifically, using a difference-in-differences approach, we study the effect of changes...