Hermann Gartner

Institute for Employment Research

This paper proposes a new approach to evaluate the macroeconomic effects of the “Hartz IV” reform, which reduced the generosity of long-term unemployment benefits. We propose a model with different unemployment durations, where the reform initiates both a partial effect and an equilibrium effect. We estimate the relative importance of these two eff...

Fixed search costs, that is, costs that do not vary with search duration, can amplify the cyclical volatility of the labor market. To assess the size of fixed costs, we analyze the relation between search costs and search duration using German establishment data. An instrumental variable estimation shows no relation between search duration and sear...

I test the evidence for implicit contracts across different regimes of industrial relations in Germany. The result is that there is strong evidence for implicit contracts. Comparing regimes of industrial relations, I find stronger support for implicit contracts in firms with individual bargaining and when a works council exists.

Using a representative establishment dataset, this paper is the first to analyze the incidence of wage bargaining and wage posting in the matching process from the employers’ side. We show that both modes of wage determination coexist in the German labor market, with more than one-third of hirings being characterized by individual wage negotiations...

Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth only in combination with collective bargaining. Wage adj...

The labor market in Germany is more sclerotic and volatile than in the US. We show theoretically that sclerosis and large volatilities are two sides of the same coin. Both may be driven by large hiring costs and low quit rates.

No abstract available.

Zusammenfassung Bis in die 90er Jahre war der deutsche Arbeitsmarkt dadurch charakterisiert, dass ein Aufschwung den Bestand der Arbeitslosigkeit kaum beeinfl usste, eine Rezession hingegen schon. Seit fünf Jahren gilt das Umgekehrte: der Aufschwung schlägt auf die Entwicklung der Arbeitslosigkeit durch, die Rezession hingegen kaum. Offenbar prägen...

We estimate individual potential income with stochastic earnings frontiers to measure overqualification as the ratio between actual income and potential income. To do this, we remove a drawback of the IAB employment sample, the censoring of the income data, by multiple imputation. The measurement of overqualification by the income ratio is also a v...

Whereas educational inequalities between women and men and differences in labor market participation shrinked or even diminished during the last decades, the gender pay gap remained stable over time. This is remarkable because the pay gap has attracted much more attention as the main target of anti-discrimination policies. Using data from the IAB (...

Regional patterns of inflation persistence have received attention only at a very coarse level of territorial disaggregation, that of EMU member states. However economic disparities within EMU member states are an equally important policy issue. This paper considers a country with a large regional divide, i.e., Italy, at a fine level of territorial...

This paper shows that the German labor market is more volatile than the US labor market. Specifically, the volatility of the cyclical component of several labor market variables (e.g., the job-finding rate, labor market tightness, and job vacancies) divided by the volatility of labor productivity is roughly twice as large as in the United States. W...

"The Institute for Employment Research regularly informs about the current situation and future development on the labour market. For example, it serves as consultant of the Federal Employment Agency and its autonomous administrative bodies, and the Federal Ministry of Labour. Such information is necessary, for instance, in the course of budget pla...

The German labor market was fundamentally reformed in 2005. Former un-employment assistance and social assistance have been merged to the basic social care for needy jobseekers. A number of active labor market programs support these needy job-seekers. Our paper analyses the effectiveness of targeted wage subsides, paid to employers for a limited pe...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of unobserved heterogeneity in structural discrete choice models of labour supply for the evaluation of tax-reforms. Within this framework, unobserved heterogeneity has been estimated either parametrically or nonparametrically through random co- efficient models. Nevertheless, the estimation of such mode...

Im aktuellen Aufschwung hat auch die Arbeitslosigkeit deutlich abgenommen. War die Beschäftigungsintensität des Wachstums im Aufschwung 1998-2000 größer? Welche Bedeutung kommt den Reformen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt für den derzeitigen Aufschwung zu? Wird der Rückgang der Arbeitslosigkeit aufgrund einer Statistikbereinigung überzeichnet? Ist der gegenwä...

In most developing countries, income inequality tends to worsen during initial stages of growth, especially in urban areas. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides a sharp contrast where income inequality among urban households is lower than that among rural households. In terms of inclusive growth, the existence of income mobility over a lon...

"In this paper, we remove one serious drawback of the IAB employment sample impeding its applicability to the estimation of earnings frontiers: the censoring of the income data, by multiple imputation. Then, we estimate individual potential income with stochastic earnings frontiers, and we measure overeducation as the ratio between actual income an...

Research conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s showed considerable inequalities within male-female couples as concerns financial arrangements and access to personal spending money. This paper provides an analysis of the allocation of money in German couples that goes beyond previous research in two respects. First, data are used that permit direct...

In a perfectly competitive labour market wages are only determined by productivity characteristics; labour is remunerated with their marginal product. But in the real world we observe huge wage differences not attributable to productivity characteristics. We observe wage differences between industries (Krueger and Summers, 1988), between firms (Abo...

Research conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s showed considerable inequalities within male-female couples as concerns financial arrangements and access to personal spending money. This paper provides an analysis of the allocation of money in German couples that goes beyond previous research in two respects. First, data are used that permit direct...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of unobserved heterogeneity in structural discrete choice models of labour supply for the evaluation of tax-reforms. Within this framework, unobserved heterogeneity has been estimated either parametrically or nonparametrically through random co- efficient models. Nevertheless, the estimation of such mode...

"Since the early 90's the West German firms have to deal with sharp changes of economic environment: the German Unification, the emerging competitors in the east European countries and the deregulation of several labour market institutions. We analyse the wage structure, the wage changes and the labour mobility during this period using the linked e...

To what extent is the gender wage gap of fulltime employees due to differences in productivity-related characteristics, to discrimination of female employees, and how is the wage gap affected by firm specific features? To analyze these problems we use a linked employer-employee database in 2000, made available by the German Institute for Labour Mar...

To what extent is the gender wage gap of fulltime employees due to differences in productivity-related characteristics, to discrimination of female employees, and how is the wage gap affected by firm specific features? To analyze these problems we use a linked employer-employee database in 2000, made available by the German Institute for Labour Mar...

"The linked employer-employee dataset of the IAB (LIAB) is created by matching the data of the IAB establishment panel and the process-produced data of the Federal Employment Services (in particular the IAB). The distinctive feature of these data is the combination of information about individuals and details concerning the firms in which these peo...

"In order to analyze the gender wage gap with the German IAB-employment sample we have to solve the problem of censored wages at the upper limit of the social security system. We treat this problem as a missing data problem. We regard the missingness mechanism as not missing at random (NMAR, according to Little and Rubin, 1987, 2002) as well as mis...

"Lohnunterschiede zwischen Frauen und Männern werden in der ökonomischen und sozialwissenschaftlichen Diskussion unter anderem auf die unterschiedlichen beruflichen Tätigkeiten von Männern und Frauen (Segregation) sowie die unterschiedliche Ausstattungen mit Humankapital zurückgeführt. In dem Beitrag wird unter Verwendung eines kombinierten employe...

Zusammenfassung Lohnunterschiede zwischen Frauen und Männern werden in der ökonomischen und sozialwissenschaftlichen Diskussion unter anderem auf die unterschiedlichen beruflichen Tätigkeiten von Männern und Frauen (Segregation) sowie die unterschiedliche Ausstattungen mit Humankapital zurückgeführt. In diesem Beitrag wird unter Verwendung eines ko...

"The gender wage gap in Germany is smaller in firms covered by collective contracts or having a works council, partly because these institutions are associated with lower unobserved productivity differences and less wage discrimination, partly because they compress the distribution of wage residuals." (author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Among other factors, gender wage differences are explained by occupational segregation and and gender-specific endowments of human capital. In this article, we use linked employer-employee data of the Institute of Labor Market Research (LIAB-dataset) and ask whether the gender wage gap evolves with the distribution of female and male workers into d...

Why are similar workers paid differently? I review and compare two lines of research that have recently witnessed great progress in addressing “unexplained” wage inequality: (i) worker unobserved heterogeneity in, and sorting by, human capital; (ii) firms’ monopsony power in labor markets characterized by job search frictions. Both lines share a vi...

"The paper examines the influence of schooling and work experience on the development of wage inequality in the 1990s. On the basis of the employment and benefit recipients historical data file as well as the IAB employment sample, Mincer-type earnings functions are estimated as Tobit and quantile regressions for western and eastern Germany. An inc...

To what extent is the gender wage gap of fulltime employees due to differences in productiv-ity- related characteristics, to discrimination of female employees, and how is the wage gap affected by firm specific features? To analyze these problems we use a linked employer-employee database for East and West Germany in 2000, made available by the Ins...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of unobserved heterogeneity in structural discrete choice models of labour supply for the evaluation of tax-reforms. Within this framework, unobserved heterogeneity has been estimated either parametrically or nonparametrically through random co- efficient models. Nevertheless, the estimation of such mode...

In den hier versammelten Aufsätzen werden verschiedene statistische Verfahren zur Analyse diskreter Strukturen auf Fragen der Arbeitsmarkt- und Entwicklungsökonomie angewandt. In Teil I wird untersucht, ob Arbeitslosigkeit einen Einfluss auf das Auszugsverhalten junger Menschen in der Bundesrepublik (West) hat. Die Untersuchung wird auf Basis von D...

In dieser Arbeit wird untersucht, ob Arbeitslosigkeit einen Einfluss auf das Aus- zugsverhalten junger Menschen in der Bundesrepublik (West) hat. Die Untersuchung wird auf Basis von Daten des sozioökonomischen Panels für die Jahrgänge von 1968 bis 1979 durchgeführt. Es wird ein Hazardratenmodell geschätzt, in welchem die Zielzustände "Single-Hausha...

In dieser Arbeit werden die Auswirkungen verschiedener Methoden zur Ersetzung von fehlenden Werten auf das Ergebnis einer Regressionsnalyse untersucht. Grundlage ist eine Untersuchung von Klasen (2000) über die Unterschiede im Zusammenhang zwischen Unterernährung und Kindersterblichkeit in Afrika und Südasien. In dem Makro-Datensatz, welcher 101 En...

In dieser Arbeit wird untersucht, welche individuellen Faktoren einen Einfluß auf das Auszugsverhalten junger Menschen in der Bundesrepublik (West) haben. Die Untersuchung wird auf der Basis von Daten des Sozioökonomischen Panels für die Geburtenjahrgänge von 1968-1982 durchgeführt. Es wird ein semiparametrisches Hazardratenmodell geschätzt, in dem...

In dieser Arbeit werden die Auswirkungen einer Ersetzung von fehlenden Werten auf das Ergebnis einer Regressionsanalyse untersucht. Grundlage ist eine Untersuchung von Klasen (2000) über die Unterschiede im Zusammenhang zwischen Unterernährung und Kindersterblichkeit in Afrika und Südasien. In dem Makro-Datensatz, welcher 101 Entwicklungsländer umf...