The unemployment rise in EU countries has been particularly strong for low-skilled workers. This observation has often been explained in terms of biased technical change and relative wage rigidities. More attention has been paid recently to an alternative mechanism, the crowding-out of...

In this paper, we study the development and underlying drivers of skill premiums in Germany between 1980 and 2008. We show that the significant increase in the medium to low skill wage premiums since the late 1980s was almost exclusively concentrated among the group of workers aged 30 or below....

In this paper, we study the development and underlying drivers of skill premiums in Germany between 1980 and 2008. We show that the significant increase in the medium to low skill wage premiums since the late 1980s was almost exclusively concentrated among the group of workers aged 30 or below....

This paper investigates the impact of modern information and communication technologies on the demand for heterogeneous labor. It starts with an interrelated factor demand system. The "desired" level of employment, which is needed in such models, is derived from a generalized Leontief cost...

This paper offers the first study of job polarization in Great Britain using workplace level data. We document widespread and increasing occupational specialization within establishments, along with substantial heterogeneity in specialization within industries. Changes in the specialization...

We examine the effects of endogenous offshoring on cost-efficiency, wages and unemployment in a task-assignment model with skill heterogeneity. Exact conditions for the following insights are derived. The distributional effect of offshoring (high-) low-skill-intensive tasks is similar to...

When reviewing the literature concerning the development of the Eastern German economy, a too rigid labor market and its respective institutions are considered as the main source of the persistent high unemployment rates and the slow economic performance. However, when important macroeconomic...

We assess whether online data on vacancies and applications to a job board are a suitable source for studying skills dynamics outside of Europe and the United States, where a rich literature has examined skills dynamics using online vacancy data. Yet, the knowledge on skills dynamics is scarce...

In this paper I analyze the effects of information and communication technology (ICT) on compensation shares of high-, medium-, and low-skilled workers. Com- pared to other studies, I investigate this question using a considerably richer data set with respect to the length of time series, set of...