Building on a new data set which is combined from national micro-data bases, we highlight differences in the structure of migrants to four countries, viz. France, Germany, the UK and the US, which receive a substantial share of all immigrants to the OECD world. Looking at immigrants by source...

For a long time, migration has been subject to intensive economic research. Nevertheless, empirical evidence regarding the determinants of migration still appears to be incomplete. In this paper, we analyze the effects of socio-economic and institutional determinants, especially labor-market...

This paper analyses the effectiveness of the corporate income tax as an automatic stabilizer. It employs a unique firm-level dataset of German manufacturers combining financial statements with firm-specific information about credit market restrictions. The results show that approximately 20 per...

In 2004, a section was added to the German Protection against Dismissal Act, establishing a new procedure to dismiss an employee, given a predetermined severance payment. Most legal scholars presume the change to be without impact, while a minority of experts claims it to be either beneficial or...

Many European countries restrict immigration from new EU member countries. The rationale is to avoid adverse wage and employment effects. We quantify these effects for Germany. Following Borjas (2003), we estimate a structural model of labor demand, based on elasticities of substitution between...

In Germany, there is no trade union membership wage premium, while the membership fee amounts to 1% of the gross wage. Therefore, prima facie, there are strong incentives to free-ride on the benefits of trade unionism. We establish empirical evidence for a private gain from trade union...

The German Income Tax Reform 2000, which announced a reduction in income tax rates to be implemented in a series of three stages, was welcomed by the public as a step towards unleashing lurking growth potentials. Nonetheless, in the course of the year 2001 a dispute arose, centering around the...