This paper presents estimates of the unification bonus for East Germans over the period 1991 to 1998. The unification bonus is defined as the discounted value of the difference between a person’s actual income and his or her counterfactual real income stream forecast for a hypothetical...

Family budget data for East and West Germany over the past decade are analyzed in the light of the convergence of relative price structures and the elimination of quantity constraints in the East during the process of eastern economic reconstruction. Exact cost-of-living indexes for generalized...