In this paper, we investigate how changes in the skill mix of local labor supply are absorbed by the economy. We distinguish between three adjustment mechanisms: through factor prices, through an expansion in the size of those production units that use the more abundant skill group more...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the East German economy at the firm level using an unbalanced panel over the transition period 1994 to 1998. We adopt a translog stochastic frontier model to estimate technical efficiency in eastern and western Germany. The results...

In this paper, we investigate how changes in the skill mix of local labor supply are absorbed by the economy. We distinguish between three adjustment mechanisms: through factor prices, through an expansion in the size of those production units that use the more abundant skill group more...

In this paper we study the sources of wage growth. We identify the contribution to such growth of general, sector specific and firm specific human capital. Our results are interpretable within the context of a model where the returns to human capital may be heterogeneous and where firms may...

We study an overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation with threshold effects using regional data for West Germany. Our basic goal is to shed light on the growth of West German regions. The paper finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a...

The paper bases itself on recent theoretical writings in growth economics that empha-size the effects of both own R&D efforts and of interregional technology spillovers on regions´ productivity. We propose robust estimation techniques to evaluate the R&D spillovers across West German functional...

We establish some stylised facts for Germany's business cycle at the level of the firm. Based on longitudinal firm-level data from the Bundesbank's balance sheet statistic covering, on average, 55,000 firms per year from 1971 to 1998, we analyse the reallocation across individual producers and,...

This paper tests the hypothesis that unions, through imposing wage floors that lead to wage compression, increase on-the-job training. Our analysis focuses on Germany which provides an interesting context to test this hypothesis, due to its large scale apprenticeship programme and its collective...