In periods of unusual weather, forecasters face a problem of interpreting economic data: Which part goes back to the underlying economic trend and which part arises from a special weather effect? In this paper, we discuss ways to disentangle weather-related from business cycle-related influences...

Using German linked employer-employee data this paper investigates the gender wage gap at the time of entering the labour market and its development during workers’ early career. The analysis contributes to the existing research on gender wage differentials among young workers by providing...

This paper examines the contemporaneous relationship between the exchange rate regime and structural economic reforms for a sample of CEEC/CIS transition countries. We investigate empirically whether structural reforms are complements or substitutes for monetary commitment in the attempt to...

Does immigration accelerate sectoral change towards high-productivity sectors? This paper uses the mass displacement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II as a natural experiment to study this question. A simple two-sector model of the economy, in which moving...

This paper examines the patterns of educational assortative mating in East and West Germany. In the literature it is well known that individuals do not mate randomly with respect to social and cultural traits, and that highly assortative mating can lead to polarization and exacerbate economic...

Empirical evidence on the degree of business-tax shifting to employees via the wage level is highly controversial and rare. It remains open to which extent the tax burden is shifted, whether there are differences for tax increases and decreases, or whether there exists some treatment...

This article revisits an analysis by Frondel, Ritter and Schmidt (2008) of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act, which legislates a system of feed-in tariff s to promote the use of renewable energies. As in the original article, we argue that Germany’s support scheme subsidizes renewable energy...

This paper estimates the employment effects of industry-specific, collectively-bargained minimum wages in Germany for two occupations associated with the construction sector. I propose a truly exogenous control group in contrast to the control group design used in the literature. Further, a...

Volunteering plays a prominent role in the charitable provision of goods and services, yet we know relatively little about why individuals spend time and money to the charity. Assuming that volunteering is a consumption good, we analyze the determinants of individuals’ charitable cash...

This study puts the monetary transmission process in the eurozone between 2003 and 2011 under closer scrutiny. For this purpose, we investigate the interest rate pass-through from money market to various loan rates for up to twelve countries of the European Monetary Union. Applying different...