This volume was prepared by Jens Ruhose while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes four self-contained chapters that contribute to the understanding of the...

The role of skilled labor in the modern economy and its importance in explaining trends in wage inequality and productivity has been a focus of a broad strand of research in economics. Labor is an input into production that is very different from capital or materials. One key difference is that...

This thesis consists of four essays that contribute to the empirical literature on the determinants of recent changes in the employment and wage structure in Germany. The first essay analyzes recent employment growth at the lower tail of the wage distribution and its relation to technological...

This volume was prepared by Susanne Link during her stay at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Department of Human Capital and Innovation of the Ifo Institute of Economic Research. It was accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Economics Departure of the University of Munich in...