Hardly noticed in Western Europe the fall of the Iron Curtain had also ef-fects on the regional structures of the labour markets in the Central and Eastern Euro-pean Countries (CEEC). I analyse whether during the undoubtedly increasing integration of markets the Czech border region close to the...

The search model contains two matching technologies, the public employment service (PES) with its type-specific registers for workers and vacancies, and the search market where firms advertise vacancies and unemployed who have not been placed by the PES search for jobs. The placement activity of...

While it is a stylized fact that exporting firms pay higher wages than non-exporting firms, the direction of the link between exporting and wages is less clear. Using a rich set of German linked employer-employee panel data we follow over time plants that start to export. We show that the...

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth...

Using a large linked employer-employee data set for Germany, we investigate differences in the unexplained gender pay gap between owner-run and manager-run firms. We hypothesise that owner-run firms have higher pay gaps because active owners are less inhibited to live out profit-reducing...

This paper presents evidence on the impact of hours spent on housework activities on individuals’ wages for Germany using data from both the German Socio-Economic Panel and the German Time Use Survey. In contrast to most of the international literature, we find no negative effect of housework...

Using a large data set for Germany, we show that both the raw and the unexplained gender earnings gap are higher in self-employment than in paid employment. Applying an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, more than a quarter of the difference in monthly self-employment earnings can be traced back to...

This paper analyzes the time allocation of self-employed men and women compared to men and women in paid employment and the impact of house-work on earnings of self-employed individuals using data from two German datasets. Self-employed women spend more time on housework activities and...

Using linked employer–employee panel data for West Germany that include direct information on the competition faced by plants, we investigate the effect of product market competition on the gender pay gap. Controlling for match fixed effects we find that intensified competition significantly...

Most self-employed would apparently earn higher earnings if they were working in paid employment. One explanation for this “return-to-entrepreneur-ship puzzle” could be that entrepreneurship entails substantial non-monetary bene-fits, such as autonomy, flexibility, and task variety....