The last few decades have seen a spectacular integration of the global economy through trade. The rising integration of world markets has brought with it a disintegration of the production process, however, as manufacturing or services activities done abroad are combined with those performed at...

Using the IAB Employment Sample (IABS) covering 1980-2001 we investigate what impact the fall of the Iron Curtain has had on the skill structure of employment and wages in the western German districts neighbouring the Czech Republic. The introduction of free trade in this region, which has one...