This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...

Low-skilled immigrants indirectly affect public finances through their effect on resident wages & labor supply. We operationalize this indirect fiscal effect in a model of immigration and the labor market. We derive closed-form expressions for this effect in terms of estimable statistics. An...

As the movement of population from the New Member States (NMS) of the EU to the older members is a relatively new flow, it is important to build up our knowledge of who is moving within Europe and how they are performing in their destinations...

Based on a wage curve approach we examine the labor market effects of migration in Germany. The wage curve relies on the assumption that wages respond to a change in the unemployment rate, albeit imperfectly. This allows one to derive the wage and employment effects of migration simultaneously...

In this paper we survey the recent developments in two empirical literatures at the crossroadsof labor and urban economics: Studies about localized human capital externalities (HCE) andabout the urban wage premium (UWP). After surveying the methods and main results of eachof these two...

We provide a comprehensive analysis of income inequality and income dynamics for Germany over the last two decades. Combining personal income tax and social security data allows us - for the first time - to offer a complete picture of the distribution of annual earnings in Germany. We find that...

We evaluate the effects of international outsourcing and labor taxation on wage formation and equilibrium unemployment in dual labor markets. Outsourcing promotes wage dispersion between the high-skilled and low-skilled workers. Higher domestic low-skilled wage tax, higher payroll tax and lower...

To explain potential sources of wage rigidity this article analyzes a model of reciprocalkindness applied to a repeated ultimatum game with changing and nonzeroconflict payoffs. The model is also tested in a laboratory experiment. The resultsare compatible with the rentsharingapproach to wage...

College-educated workers are twice as likely as high school graduates to make lasting long-distance moves, but little is known about the role of college itself in determining geographic mobility. Unobservable characteristics related to selection into college might also drive the relationship...

This paper examines the relationship between the brain drain and country size, as well as the extent of small states overall loss of human capital. We find that small states are the main losers because they i) lose a larger proportion of their skilled labor force and ii) exhibit stronger...