Documents Sommerfeld, Katrin 6 results

"Union representation has been in strong decline in most OECD countries with potentially important consequences for wages. What drives this decline? We try to answer this question by developing and implementing a detailed decomposition approach based on Fairlie (2005). Using linked employer-employee data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey for 2001 and 2006, we document a sharp drop in collective bargaining coverage that amounts to 17 percentage points for males and 20 percentage points for females in West, and eight and 14 percentage points, respectively, in East Germany. We find that neither changes in the characteristics nor changes in the coefficients associated with the characteristics as a whole provide an explanation for the drop in collective bargaining coverage. The drop in coverage is the result of an unexplained time trend."

"The effects of childbirth on future labor market outcomes are a key issue for policy discussion. This paper implements a dynamic treatment approach to estimate the effect of having the first child now versus later on future employment for the case of Germany, a country with a long maternity leave coverage. Effect heterogeneity is assessed by estimating ex post outcome regressions. Based on SOEP data, we provide estimates at a monthly frequency. The results show that there are very strong negative employment effects which are causally due to childbirth. Although the employment loss is reduced over the first five years following childbirth, it does not level off to zero. We find a significant reduction in the employment loss over time."

"Performance pay is of growing importance to the wage structure as it applies to a rising share of employees. At the same time wage dispersion is growing continuously. This leads to the question of how the growing use of performance pay schemes is related to the increase in wage inequality? German SOEP data for the years 1984 to 2009 confirm the large increase in the application of performance pay schemes. This in turn led to an upward shift of the wage distribution by about one log point. However, it did not contribute to the growth in wage inequality. Even though wage inequality grew within the group of employees who receive performance pay, it grew even more so within the group who do not receive it. Still, the wage difference between both wage schemes remained flat over the distribution. The empirical analysis employs sequential decompositions in a quantile regression framework."

"Zielsetzung dieser Arbeit ist eine zusammenfassende Darstellung und Diskussion der Entwicklung der Lohnungleichheit in Deutschland. Insbesondere wird hierbei der Rückgang der Tarifbindung als mögliche institutionelle Ursache für die Entwicklungen des Arbeitsmarkts seit den 1990er Jahren in Betracht gezogen. Gleichzeitig greift die Arbeit die Polarisierungshypothese auf. Die Lohnungleichheit ist seit Mitte der 1990er Jahre über den gesamten Bereich der Lohnverteilung stark angestiegen. Der Anstieg der Lohnungleichheit zwischen 2001 und 2006 lässt sich nur zu einem kleinen Teil durch den starken Rückgang der Tarifbindung erklären. Als sehr bedeutender Erklärungsfaktor für den Anstieg der Lohnungleichheit können die Veränderungen der Lohnunterschiede zwischen und innerhalb der Wirtschaftszweige identifiziert werden. Diese zunehmende Lohnflexibilisierung erfolgt sowohl im tarifgebundenen wie auch im nicht tarifgebundenen Bereich. Der Rückgang von Routinetätigkeiten ist eine plausible Erklärung für die Polarisierung der Beschäftigung in Deutschland. Seit den 1990er Jahren ist jedoch keine Polarisierung der Entlohnung in Deutschland festzustellen. "

"This paper investigates the increase in wage inequality, the decline in collective bargaining, and the development of the gender wage gap in West Germany between 2001 and 2006. Based on detailed linked employer-employee data, we show that wage inequality is rising strongly - driven not only by real wage increases at the top of the wage distribution, but also by real wage losses below the median. Coverage by collective wage bargaining plummets by 16.5 (19.1) percentage points for male (female) employees. Despite these changes, the gender wage gap remains almost constant, with some small gains for women at the bottom and at the top of the wage distribution. A sequential decomposition analysis using quantile regression shows that all workplace related effects (firm effects and bargaining effects) and coefficients for personal characteristics contribute strongly to the rise in wage inequality. Among these, the firm coefficients effect dominates, which is almost exclusively driven by wage differences within and between different industries. Labor demand or firm wage policy related effects contribute to an increase in the gender wage gap. Personal characteristics tend to reduce wage inequality for both, males and females, as well as the gender wage gap. "

"Labour markets in the European Union are increasingly facing labour shortages. This ZEW Policy Brief argues that immigration from third countries should be increased to alleviate bottlenecks in the supply of workers to the economy. On the one hand, immigration policies should target high-skilled individuals and those trained in shortage occupations and allow them to search for a job from within the EU. On the other hand, low-skilled employees also appear to contribute to mitigating labour shortages. This is because labour shortages are also present in some low-skill occupations, and because additional immigrant workers could “free up” native workers to work in shortage occupations or push natives into better jobs. Therefore, this ZEW policy brief recommends enabling the immigration of such individuals when they have a job offer available. Broader policy measures should be put into place to facilitate the recognition of foreign qualifications."