The debate on a general statutory minimum wage in Germany prevails. Meanwhile, there have been comprehensive evaluations of minimum wages for specific industries. The present paper discusses the empirical studies on the wage and employment effects of the minimum wage in the German construction...

All parties represented in the Bundestag now support minimum-wage regulations, yet their positions on its structure and amount differ significantly. The present study shows that a general statutory minimum wage would mainly have to increase the wages of workers in "marginal employment," women,...

In this paper employment effects of a sectoral minimum wage in the German construction sector are estimated from a single cross-sectional wage distribution using parametric and semi-parametric models. Parametric functional form assumptions seem too restrictive and lead to implausible results. We...

On the basis of a structural labor demand model employment effects of a minimum wage are estimated from a single cross-sectional wage distribution. The main contribution of the paper is to relax restrictive functional form assumptions of earlier papers by introducing more flexible...

This paper provides evidence over a long time period on the question of who bears the burden of social security contributions (SSC) in Germany. Following Alvaredo et al. (2016) we exploit kinks in the budget set generated by a drop in the marginal SSC rate at earnings caps. Based on...

Eine aktuelle Studie des DIW Berlin untersucht die zu erwartenden Effekte auf die Beschäftigungsnachfrage eines bundesweiten Mindestlohns von 7,50 Euro. Da seine Einführung mit einem erheblichen Anstieg der Bruttolöhne im unteren Bereich der Lohnverteilung verbunden wäre, besteht die Gefahr...

In den letzten Jahren sind verschiedene empirische Studien zu den Beschäftigungswirkungen eines gesetzlichen Mindestlohns in Deutschland erschienen. Die Bandbreite der simulierten Job-Verluste reicht von 140 000 bis 1,2 Millionen. Eine neue Studie des DIW Berlin auf der Basis von Daten des...

The paper validates an empirical approach developed by Alvaredo and Saez (2007) which estimates the economic incidence of social security contributions (SSC) on the basis of cross-sectional earnings distributions. The method utilizes discontinuities at earnings caps where the marginal SSC rate...

Several empirical minimum wage studies have recently been published that simulate employment effects of a federal minimum wage in Germany. We disentangle various factors that explain the variation in previous simulation results. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the newly...

We estimate economic incidence of social security contributions (SSC) on the basis of cross-sectional earnings distributions. The approach exploits discontinuities in earnings distributions at kinks in the budget set which are informative about tax incidence. Contrary to most research on SSC...