This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience...

Running RIF regressions to decompose wage differences along the distribution, this is the first study documenting that worker-level variation in tasks has played a key role in the widening of the German Native-Foreign Wage Gap. Comparing variation in Individual- vs Occupation-level task measures...

We examine how changes in task content over time condition occupational wage development. Using survey data from Germany, we document substantial heterogeneity in within-occupational changes in task content. Combining this evidence with administrative data on individual employment outcomes over...

Since ethnic clustering is common in Germany, a better understanding of its effects on the integration of immigrants could be important for integration policies, especially in the light of rising immigration and a skilled worker shortage. Yet, both economic theory and empirical research for...

Economic conditions at the time of labour market entry can induce wage differentials between workers entering the labour market at different points in time. While the existence and persistence of these entry wage differentials are well documented, little is known about their interaction with...

The standard model of optimal minimum wage policy in a perfectly competitive labor market suggests that a positive tax rate on minimum wage income is Pareto inefficient. However, most countries with minimum wage legislation exhibit a positive tax rate on minimum wage income. We solve this...

We measure individual bias in labor market expectations in German survey data and find that workers on average significantly overestimate their individual probabilities to separate from their job when employed as well to find a job when unemployed. These biases vary significantly between...

I show that workers update expectations about job search and salary growth when exposed to labor market news. To identify the impact of news on expectations, I exploit Foxconn's announcement to build a large production plant in Racine County, Wisconsin. Exposure to positive news leads to an...

Linguistic distance, i.e. the dissimilarity between languages, is an important factor influencing international economic transactions such as migration or international trade flows by imposing hurdles for second language acquisition and increasing transaction costs. To measure these costs, we...

We estimate the effect of language training on subsequent employment and wages of immigrants under essential heterogeneity. The identifying variation is based on regional differences in language training availability that we use to instrument endogenous participation. Estimating marginal...