Eastern Germany's recovery from the "unification shock" has been characterized by deep structural change - with apparent repercussions for the West as well - and an integration process involving both capital deepening (extensive and intensive investment) and labor thinning (net out-migration). I...

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of labour market dynamics in Western Ger- many by looking at gross worker flows. To do so, we use a subsample of the registry data collected by the German social security system, the IAB employment sample, for the time period 1975-2001. The...

In this paper we investigate transmission and spillovers of local and foreign economic policy uncertainty shocks to unemployment in two largest economic regions in the world - the United States (US) and the Euro area (EA). For this purpose we deploy Bayesian Markov-switching structural vector...

Estimating natural rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is important for understanding the joint dynamics of unemployment, inflation, and inflation expectation. However, existing literature falls short in endogenizing inflation expectation together with NAIRU in a model consistent way. We develop and...

This paper examines magnitudes and business cycle dynamics of social security contributions (SSC). In most OECD countries studied, we document a negative covariation of payroll tax burdens with GDP and GDP growth at business cycle and lower frequencies. We assess the overall magnitude of the...

Publications are a vital element of any scientist’s career. It is not only the number of media outlets but aslo the quality of published research that enters decisions on jobs, salary, tenure, etc. Academic ranking scales in economics and other disciplines are, therefore, widely used in...

How does a negative labor demand shock impact individual-level fertility? I analyze this question in the context of the East German fertility decline after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Exploiting di erential pressure for restructuring across industries, I nd that throughout the 1990s,...

"Bodenrichtwerte" reflect the average location value of land plots within a specific area. They constitute an important source of information that contributes to price transparency on land markets. In Germany, "Bodenrichtwerte" are provided by publicly appointed expert groups...

As a function of strike and time to maturity the implied volatility estimation is a challenging task in financial econometrics. Dynamic Semiparametric Factor Models (DSFM) are a model class that allows for the estimation of the implied volatility surface (IVS) in a dynamic context, employing...

This paper establishes theoretical and empirical linkages between union wage setting and the structure of the wage distribution. Theoretically, we identify conditions under which a right-to-manage model implies compression of the wage distribution in the union sector relative to the nonunion...