East German wages have been below the West German wage level since unification. Moreover, the East-West wage gap implied by the contractual wages specified in collective wage agreements is drifting ever further apart from the wage gap in terms of effective wages. This paper looks at the role of...

The extension of subsidized child care is currently on the top of the political agenda in Germany. In this paper the excess demand for subsidized child care slots is estimated using a partial observability model in the style of Abowd and Farber (1982). The results show that more than 50 percent...

This paper presents an empirical framework for the analysis of mothers' labor supply and child care choices, explicitly taking into account access restrictions to subsidized child care. This is particularly important for countries such as Germany, where subsidized child care is rationed and...

Parental leave and subsidized child care are prominent examples of family policies supporting the reconciliation of family life and labor market careers for mothers. In this paper, we combine different empirical strategies to evaluate the employment effects of these policies for mothers in...

Increasing work incentives for people with low incomes is a common topic in the policy debate across European countries. The Mini-Jobʺ reform in Germany - introduced on April 1, 2003 - can be seen in line with these policies, exempting labour income below a certain threshold from taxes and...

In this paper, I suggest an empirical framework for the analysis of mothers' labor supply and child care choices, explicitly taking into account access restrictions to subsidized child care. This is particularly important for countries such as Germany, where subsidized child care is rationed and...

Labor force participation rates of mothers in Austria and Germany are similar, however full-time employment rates are much higher among Austrian mothers. In order to find out to what extent these differences can be attributed to differences in the tax transfersystem, we perform a comparative...