We analyze the performance of firms in the German business-related services sector. A quarterly business survey provides the panel data base of our study. Firm performance is measured by the survey respondents? ordinal indication of their changes in total sales. We use a firstorder Markov chain...

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge on the link between education and wage inequality in Germany. The wage inequality is characterized by its stability, although a more detailed analysis reveals structural differences, especially between East and West Germany. Both the between and...

Exploiting the unique economic situation after German unification, I investigate how exit decisions deviate between new firms in a transition and a comparatively stable market environment. Two competing exit mechanisms are considered: entrepreneurial self-selection via voluntary liquidation and...

Using register data from the IAB employment sample, this paper studies the wage structure in the German labor market throughout the years 1992{2001. Wage dispersion has generally been rising. The increase was more pronounced in East Germany and occurred predominantly in the lower part of the...

The paper analyses the theoretical and empirical relationship between employment, skill structure and innovation in East and West German manufacturing firms. The econometric part builds on firm data from the Mannheim Innovation Panel 1993, 1994 and 1995. In the German industrial sector,...

At the start of the German unification process it was a commonly held view that east German living conditions will converge to west Geman levels within a few years. This view was not only held by notoriously optimistic politicians but also by a great many of professional economists. With...

The paper deals with growth determinants of innovative and noninnovative start-ups in Eastern and Western Germany. Based on theoretical approaches explaining the growth of firms, hypotheses on potential determinants are derived. The empirical results indicate strong correlations between average...

Die EU-Osterweiterung ermöglicht eine stärkere Arbeitsteilung zwischen den relativ kapitalreichen Staaten der EU und den relativ arbeitsreichen Zutrittsländern Mittel- und Osteuropas, von der insbesondere die ostdeutschen Kreise in Nähe der Grenze profitieren können. Diese Studie widmet...

Unification fundamentally changed the terms of quantitative macroeconomic analysis for Germany. Two main areas concerned are data availability for the eastern part of Germany and structural changes within the behavioural equations after unification. Our paper presents results from the estimation...

This paper presents microeconometric evidence on financing con-traints for research and development activities in German small and medium?sized firms (SME). Special attention is paid to the role of public R&D subsidies. For this purpose SME in Western and East-ern Germany are compared because...