Germany's more compressed wage structure is widely viewed as the main cause of the German-US difference in employment and unemployment, but part of the compression is due to Germany having a narrower distribution of skills than the US. Even adjusted for skills, however, we find that Germany has...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <title type="main">SUMMARY</title> </section> <title type="main"><b>Jobs and homework</b>
<b>Time-use evidence</b></title> <p> Employment rates and hours worked per employee are very different in the EU and the US. This paper relates the greater time worked in the US to greater marketization in the US of traditional household production: food...</p>

The most popular explanation for greater job creation in the US than in Germany is that greater dispersion of wages coupled with less regulations governing the labour market and the product market in the US has induced firms to employ many less skilled workers. While popular, these explanations...