Why do borders still matter for economic activity? The reunification of Germany in 1990 provides a unique natural … to trade between East Germany and West Germany were eliminated completely within a very short period of time. The …

spending, Germany is urged to reduce its current account surplus by increasing wages to forestall a new build-up of …

The paper sets up a two-region endogenous growth model to discuss growth and regional convergence of unified Germany … consistent with the data on government spending in East and West Germany after unification the model suggests that East Germany … will reach eighty percent of West Germany's income per capita between 20 and 30 years after unification and that actual …

-level dataset to study this redistribution in East Germany where the entire state-owned economy was either privatized or liquidated …

East and West Germany were far from being randomly selected treatment and control groups. First, the later border is … occupying forces affected East and West differently. Third, a selective fifth of the population fled from East to West Germany …

We investigate the wage assimilation of East Germans who migrated to West Germany after reunification (1990-1999). We … to West Germany who arrived at the same time. The analysis uses administrative as well as survey data. The results … suggest that East Germans faced significant initial earnings disadvantages in West Germany, even conditional on age and …