The paper empirically examines three possible reasons for the high and rising unemployment of low-skilled employees in Germany: (i) an upsurge in interindustry trade, (ii) a skill-biased technical change, and (iii) a failure of labour market adjustment. The empirical analyses indicate that an...

A two country model of trade between a flexiwage and a minimum wage economy or two mmjmum wage economies is developed. The main novelty is that there are three factors of production: capital, skilled and unskilled labour. This unlocks the terms of trade. Unskilled labour is subject to the same...

We analyze the dramatic decline of the employment share of unskilled labor in the West German economy, in particular its relation to the relatively rigid earnings structure. We find that the substitution elasticity between unskilled and skilled labor is rather low in most sectors of the economy....

An economy's production set is the collection of all net output vectors that the economy is capable of producing with a given technology and fixed quantities of primary factors of production. The boundary of this set is called the production possibility frontier or PPF. We show that, if the...

An economy's production set is the collection of all net output vectors that the economy is capable of producing with a given technology and fixed quantities of primary factors of production. The boundary of this set is called the production possibility frontier or PPF. We show that, if the...

In this paper, we study the effect of skill-biased technological change on unemployment when benefits are linked to the evolution of average income and when this is not the case. In the former case, an increase in the productivity of skilled workers and hence their wage leads to an increase in...

The US labour market is characterized by a high skill wage mark-up and low unemployment, while the German labour market has a low skill wage mark-up and a high, mainly unskilled unemployment rate. This paper adds an innovative labour supply explanation to the discussion how these distinct labour...

The US labour market is characterized by a high skill wage mark-up and low unemployment, while the German labour market has a low skill wage mark-up and a high, mainly unskilled unemployment rate. This paper adds an innovative labour supply explanation to the discussion how these distinct labour...