While the entry of new immigrants into the German labour market is usually controlled by the local labour authorities, no such controls exist for contract workers (Werkvertragsarbeitnehmer), who are subject to national quotas which are fixed in the medium term. Therefore the ease of contract...

Using data from the longitudinal Labor Market Monitor for the New German States we provide a portrait of East-West commuters in the first year after unification and evaluate various hypotheses to explain the phenomenon. Commuters may be driven by the search for higher wages in the west or by...

This paper uses micro data to analyze the wage structures in East Germany and West Germany before and after unification. In 1988, the wage distribution in East Germany was much more compressed than in West Germany or in the U.S. Since the collapse of Communism and unification with West Germany,...

Unlike prototype immigration countries, Germany has attracted a large number of southern Europeans as temporary guestworkers in the 60s and 70s. Nevertheless, many of them have stayed on and intend to remain in Germany. I investigate whether these workers have become successfully integrated into...

We analyze the impact of increased immigration on labor market outcomes of natives in Germany using a dataset of county level variables for the late 1908s. In order to construct more unified labor market regions we aggregate the 328 counties to 167 larger regions. We study two measures of...

This paper provides a snapshot of the stock of immigrants in Germany using the 1995 wave of the Microzensus with a particular emphasis on distinguishing first- and second-generation migrants. On the basis of this portrait, we draw attention to the empirically most relevant groups of immigrants...

In recent years a number of panel estimators have been suggested for sample selection models, where both the selection equation and the equation of interest contain individual effects which are correlated with the explanatory variables. We review and compare some of these estimators, and apply...

This paper presents a life cycle model for the demand for health, and derives empirical specifications that distinguish between permanent and transitory wage responses. Using panel data, we estimate dynamic health and health input demand equations. We find evidence of negative transitory wage...

This paper provides a preliminary assessment of recent reforms of German employment promotion policy. While several recent studies analyze the impact of measures of employment promotion for the case of Germany, no comparable study exists on the aggregate level, thus precluding any assessment of...

Assessing the migration potential and predicting future migration streams are among the most relevant, yet least well understood topics of migration research. The usual approach taken to address aggregate-level prediction problems is to fit ad hoc specifications to historical data, and to...