A usual interpretation of the high performance of the German economy since 2005 is that the Hartz labour market reforms have boosted German competitiveness, resulting in higher exports, higher production and lower unemployment. This explanation is at odds with the sequence of observed facts. We...

A usual interpretation of the high performance of the German economy since 2005 is that the Hartz labour market reforms have boosted German competitiveness, resulting in higher exports, higher production and lower unemployment. This explanation is at odds with the sequence of observed facts. We...

We develop a model which shows that wages, prices and real income should grow faster in countries with low increase in their labour force. If not, other countries experience growing unemployment and/or trade deficit. This result is applied to the case of Germany, which has displayed a...

We develop a model which shows that wages, prices and real income should grow faster in countries with low increase in their labour force. If not, other countries experience growing unemployment and/or trade deficit. This result is applied to the case of Germany, which has displayed a...

We develop a model which shows that wages, prices and real income should grow faster in countries with low increase in their labour force. If not, other countries experience growing unemployment and/or trade deficit. This result is applied to the case of Germany, which has displayed a...

This paper proposes an explanation for the decrease in social mobility that has occurred in the last two decades in a number of advanced economies, as well as for the divergence in mobility dynamics across countries. Within an intergenerational framework, we show that a two-tier higher education...

This paper relates social mobility and social stratification to the structure of higher education. We develop an intergenerational model which shows that a two-tier higher education characterised by a division between elite and standard universities can be a key factor in generating permanent...

This paper establishes stylized facts about the cyclicality of real consumer wages and real producer wages in Germany. As detrending methods we apply the deterministic trend model, the Beveridge-Nelson decomposition, the Hodrick-Prescott filter, the Baxter-King filter and the structural time...

Focusing on the compression of wage cuts, many empirical studies find a high degree of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR). However, the resulting macroeconomic effects seem to be surprisingly weak. This contradiction can be explained within an intertemporal framework in which DNWR not only...

This paper sheds new light on the mutual relationship between investor sentiment and excess returns corresponding to the bubble component of stock prices. We propose to use the wavelet concept of the phase angle to determine the lead-lag relation between these variables. The wavelet phase angle...