Suchergebnisse

AbstractJob loss expectations were widespread amongst workers in East Germany following reunification with West Germany. Though experiencing a large negative employment shock, East German workers were nevertheless overpessimistic immediately after reunification with respect to their job loss risk. Over time, job loss expectations fell and converged to West German levels, which was driven by a stabilizing economic environment and by an adaptation of the interpretation of economic signals with workers learning to distinguish individual risk from firm‐level risk. In fact, conditional on actual job loss risk, East German workers quickly caught up to West Germans regarding the share of correctly predicted job losses.

Most countries show a residency discount in rents for sitting tenants. In the wake of strong rent increases and housing shortages, Germany implemented a reform in 2001 to curtail rent increases. Based on linked housing-tenant data for Germany, this paper estimates panel OLS and quantile regressions of rents within tenancies. The results show that rents deflated by the CPI increase strongly from 1984 until the reform in 2001, and there is a reversal in the trend afterwards. Before the reform, there is a significant residence discount which decreases in absolute value with tenure. The reform reduces rents, in particular for expensive apartments and for new leases. There is no residency discount after the reform.

AbstractThis article provides a detailed decomposition analysis of the gender differences in workplace training throughout the working life with a particular focus on parental leave and supervisors using personnel records from a large German firm. Females obtain less training during the early career, and more at higher age. The timing of the training gap seems to be driven by diverging career paths associated with employment interruptions. However, we find no evidence for catching‐up effects after parental leave. Furthermore, including supervisor‐fixed effects cannot explain the gender differences in training. The training of both male and female employees is positively associated with the training of the supervisor.

ABSTRACTIt is commonplace in the debate on Germany's labor market problems to argue that low wage dispersion is a major reason for the high unemployment rate. This paper analyzes the relationship between unemployment and residual wage dispersion for individuals with comparable attributes. In the conventional neoclassical point of view, wages are determined by the marginal product of the workers. Accordingly, increases in union minimum wages result in a decline of residual wage dispersion and higher unemployment. A competing view regards wage dispersion as the outcome of search frictions and the associated monopsony power of the firms. Accordingly, an increase in search frictions causes both higher unemployment and higher wage dispersion. The empirical analysis attempts to discriminate between the two hypotheses for West Germany analyzing the relationship between wage dispersion and both the level of unemployment as well as the transition rates between different labor market states. The findings are not completely consistent with either theory. However, as predicted by search theory, one robust result is that unemployment by cells is not negatively correlated with the within‐cell wage dispersion.

Das Argument, die niedrige Lohnspreizung in Deutschland sei der Hauptgrund für die hohe Arbeitslosenquote, gehört zu den Gemeinplätzen in der öffentlichen Auseinandersetzung über die Arbeitsmarktprobleme Deutschlands. Die Studie analysiert das Verhältnis von Arbeitslosigkeit und Lohnspreizung für Individuen mit vergleichbaren Eigenschaften. Vom konventionellen neoklassischen Standpunkt betrachtet werden die Löhne durch das Grenzprodukt der Arbeitnehmer bestimmt. Steigende Mindestlöhne resultieren, sofern sie eine Bindungswirkung entfalten, dann in einer Abnahme der Lohnspreizung und in höherer Arbeitslosigkeit. Eine konkurrierende Sichtweise betrachtet die Lohnspreizung als das Resultat von Suchfriktionen und der damit verbundenen Nachfragemacht der Unternehmen. Ein Anstieg der Suchfriktionen führt aus dieser Sicht sowohl zu höherer Arbeitslosigkeit als auch zu höherer Lohnspreizung. Aus diesen Theorieansätzen leiten die Autoren empirisch testbare einander zuwider laufende Hypothesen ab, die das Verhältnis von Lohnspreizung, Niveau der Arbeitslosigkeit und den Übergangsraten zwischen unterschiedlichen Arbeitsmarktzuständen betreffen. Die Ergebnisse ihrer empirischen Analysen sind mit keiner der beiden Theorien in vollem Umfang konsistent. Ein robustes und der Suchtheorie konsistentes Ergebnis ist indessen, dass Arbeitslosigkeit und Lohnspreizung für vergleichbare Individuen nicht negativ korreliert ist. (IAB)