The paper contributes to the globalization debate by scrutinizing the international spillover effects which are provoked if a single country reduces the generosity of the unemployment compensation system or weakens labor union power. For this purpose a two-country model with imperfect...

This article establishes stylized facts about the cyclicality of real consumer wages and real producer wages in Germany. As detrending methods, we apply the Beveridge–Nelson decomposition, the Hodrick–Prescott filter, the Baxter–King filter, and the structural time series model. The...

Focusing on the compression of wage cuts, many empirical studies find a high degree of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR). However, the resulting macroeconomic effects seem to be surprisingly weak. This contradiction can be explained within an intertemporal framework in which DNWR not only...

If downward nominal wage rigidity exists, it should affect the distribution of earnings changes. We present a common analytical framework for three distinct and previously unconnected approaches to the analysis of downward nominal rigidity, the skewness-location approach, the symmetry approach...

Based on a model with imperfectly competitive labor and product markets the real consequences of labor market shocks for economies with either an earnings-related or flat-rate unemployment compensation system are considered. A distinctive feature of the analysis is the comparison of both...

Based on a two-country model it is scrutinized how the structure of the unemployment benefit system affects the consequences of idiosyncratic labor market shocks on real wages and unemployment in other countries. International spillover effects are caused by changes in world real income. The...