In the process of European integration, regions close to a border are especially affected by labour market liberalisation. Using data from the IAB employment subsample (IABS) and the employment register (BeH) for the period before and after the opening of the border (1980-2001) I shed light on...

We analyze the welfare and employment effects of different wage bargaining regimes. Within the large firm search model, we show that collective bargaining affects employment via two channels. Collective bargaining exerts opposing effects on job creation and wage setting. Firms have a stronger...

Multinational firms transfer to their foreign affiliates superior technology, leading to higher productivity of their workers and therefore to higher wages, or so the often cited rent-sharing theory of multinational firms explains. But studies have shown that oftentimes, this results not from...

We exploit regional differences in labour market density to conduct a simple empirical test of dynamic monopoly and selection wage theories. According to selection wage theories employers offer above-average wages in order to attract more applicants. This allows them to be choosier and to select...

We demonstrate that almost one half of the observed wage gap between East and West Germany reflects differences in worker, establishment, and regional characteristics rather than differences in productivity at the establishment level. Regional price and establishment size differentials alone...

High poverty rates as well as a very unequal distribution of income and wealth are distinctive features of post Apartheid South Africa. Studies analysing the extent of income inequality show that since the end of Apartheid the distribution of income has at best not changed at all, but depending...

I test some predictions of Gary Becker’s theory of taste discrimination regarding discrimination of foreigners by employers, co-workers and customers. I combine a 2% sample of the German working population and a 50% sample of German plants with low-level regional data, including the vote...

In this paper we study how the determinants of regional commuting in Italy have evolved in the past fifteen years. Using labour force data from 1992 to 2008 we estimate a model where the probability of commuting is regressed on a wide set of individual, job, firm and regional characteristics....

Empirical studies find that the age-variance profile of wages is U-shaped. The objective of this paper is to explore the driving forces of the U-shape in a model with search frictions. I introduce endogenous search effort and a fixed retirement age into Cahuc, Postel-Vinay, and Robin s (2006)...