Stephan Brunow

University of Applied Labour Studies of the Federal Employment Agency · Department of Labour Economics

Many firms in Germany are short of qualified workers, whereby East German regions are particularly affected because of the out-migration to West Germany after the reunification. This gives rise to an important debate for regional policy as the shortage of workers is a major challenge for each region and firm. In this context, out-commuters—workers...

It is often stated that certain occupations in Germany, because of “ Demographic Change “, are dwindling, implying a labor shortage. We investigate the 10-year wage growth of young employees entering the labor market in different occupations. Our findings suggest that regional labor market tightness in occupational fields significantly explains wag...

We compare real wage differences between centralized and peripheral areas and highly centralized and peripheral areas using vast information of German administrative data that contains more than 2.8 Mio individuals and 660,000 firms. We provide substantial empirical evidence that most of the wage gaps can be explained by differences in endowments o...

Zusammenfassung Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Entlohnungsstruktur von ausländischen und deutschen sozialversicherungspflichtig Vollzeitbeschäftigten und zielt auf die Lohnzuwächse durch die Aneignung von zusätzlicher Erfahrung auf dem deutschen Arbeitsmarkt. Bisherige Erkenntnisse für Deutschland deuten darauf hin, dass Arbeitsmarkterfahrung bei A...

The German Council of Economic Experts (GCEE) argues for a labor market-driven immigration of skilled migrants into Germany to overcome a decline in workforce due to demographic ageing. We pick up this current debate on skilled immigration by analyzing the migrant-native wage differential for skilled workers in Germany and consider various informat...

The German labour force is expected to shrink in the next two decades due to a decline in population. Therefore, the immigration of workers from abroad could compensate for potential negative consequences of such population decline. Is Germany competitive for immigration—i.e., do German employers pay enough to make it attractive as a destination co...

Several studies have sought evidence as to whether ethnically diverse teams promote a diversity in knowledge and perspectives which is beneficial for innovation. In multicultural societies, however, there are multiple opportunities for exchange between people from different ethnic backgrounds, and the extent to which such encounters actually imply...

Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) are widely perceived as being important drivers of technological progress and innovation. They generally depend on knowledge exchanges and, therefore, geographical proximity to markets, customers and suppliers would be expected to be a critical factor in their performance. This paper investigates how the...

The international trade literature highlights the importance of firm productivity and economies of scale on the firm’s international export success. In the context of agglomeration economies, firms enjoy productivity gains when they are located close to related firms and they gain from knowledge spillovers and other positive externalities. They may...

Background Better estimates of workers' willingness to pay to reduce commutes can help evaluate transport policy as well as innovations in workplace organisation implemented by firms (such as telecommuting). These measures could facilitate the employment of workers with care responsibilities by reducing commuting cost. Objectives We estimate female...

We present empirical evidence suggesting that technological progress in the digital age will be biased not only with respect to skills acquired through education but additionally with respect to non‐cognitive skills (personality). We measure the direction of technological change by estimated future digitalization probabilities of occupations, and n...

This paper examines the link between innovation and the endowments of creative and science oriented STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - workers at the level of the firm and at the city-/regional-level in Germany. It also looks into whether the presence of these two groups of workers has greater benefits for larger cities than...

Germany is expected to decline in terms of population in the next few decades. In the transition period, the working-age population will shrink faster than the share of pensioners. This phenomena, the “demographic change”, puts pressure on the welfare system and therefore, strategies are requested to face the demographic process. Strategies discuss...

There is evidence from the literature that firms enjoy higher productivity levels, when the workforce employed is culturally more diverse. It is an open question whether this gain is utilized to shift the supply curve and set lower prices in order to achieve a higher demand and possibly higher revenues. This knowledge gap is not addressed in the ex...

This article shows how the impulses of the transformation process in eastern Germany have spread through the economy and the labour market. The form of transformation has long-term effects on the form of control over the economy; it is managed largely from western firms. This fact has manifold consequences for the innovation behaviour of plants, am...

Recent research suggests that the welfare gains that would result from removing restrictions on international migration are large. The long-run impact of a higher level of international migration on the global economy is potentially even larger if it triggers an increase in the global growth rate, but such a growth rate impact is much harder to det...

Urbanization and localization effects are known to boost the regional economy and its growth potential. The emergence of these effects is due to localized knowledge flows, the closeness to markets, but also due to the diversity of services and industries. All these effects have the potential to increase the productivity (and profitability) of firms...

In the presence of agglomeration economies one might expect a relocation and concentration of industries. Then firm start-up activities may be assumed to reveal those effects. We introduce an empirical testable model inspired by the New Economic Geography and human capital externalities literature. The novelty of this paper is that it derives a mea...

Because of an inflow of people into the EU but also because of the freedom of workplace choice within the EU, European regions are becoming more diverse in cultural terms. Despite the redistribution of labour and changes in regional labour supply, the ultimate question raised is whether there are additional gains or losses as a result of immigratio...

There is a broad body of theoretical and empirical literature dealing with trip chaining behaviour. This paper adds to the literature while focusing on the impact of activity chaining on the duration of time spent on individual purposes. Two questions in particular are addressed: first, does an additional purpose added to a trip chain affect the du...

There is evidence from the literature that firms enjoy higher productivity levels when the workforce employed is culturally more diverse. It is an open question whether this gain is utilized to shift the supply curve and set lower prices, in order to achieve a higher demand and possibly higher revenues. This knowledge gap is not addressed in the ex...

Using comprehensive data for German establishments (1999-2008), we estimate plant-level production functions to analyze if “cultural diversity” affects total factor productivity. We distinguish diversity in the establishment's workforce and in the aggregate regional labor force where the plant is located. We find that a larger share of foreign work...

International immigration affects the degree of cultural diversity present in a labour force. This paper focuses on the consequences of immigration with respect to the level of cultural diversity by estimating employment functions for individual establishments. The theory behind the empirical analyses is based on a 'turned around' New Economic Geog...

After the crisis years of 2008 and 2009 EU countries followed different employment pathes. Employment and wage levels, for instance, are quite unevenly distributed across Europe. Some of the member states expect labour shortages due to demographic change in the future. If this is the case, wages will rise when the shortages occur. From literature o...

This paper analyses regional firm growth on industry level. To address this question the theoretical models of the New Economic Geography literature of Baldwin (1999), Baldwin et al. (2001) and Martin and Ottaviano (1999) are taken and augmented to a multi-sector approach to find an empirical specification. The main difference to existing literatur...

We explore the impact of the age structure of human capital on average regional productivity by applying a spatial econometric analysis based on an augmented Lucas‐type production function. We also apply a new definition of regional human capital focusing on its availability. The estimates provide evidence that there are age specific human capital...

This paper analyses the impact of the regional age structure on growth of German regions. Based on a neoclassical growth model an augmented Solow model was derived and estimated in a spatial econometric approach. Besides labor and human capital, public spendings and urbanisation measures are controlled for. Adding the age structure of the employed...

This paper analyses the impact of the regional age structure on growth of German regions. Based on a neoclassical growth model an augmented Solow model was derived and estimated in a spatial econometric approach. Besides labor and human capital, public spendings and urbanisation measures are controlled for. Adding the age structure of the employed...

We explore the impact of the age structure of human capital on average regional productivity by applying a spatial econometric analysis based on an augmented Lucas-type production function. We also apply a new definition of regional human capital focusing on its availability. The estimates provide evidence that there are age specific human capital...

European regions differ considerably in their population age structure. This implies the questions, whether a specific age structure is favorable for regional per capita output growth and whether differences in the age structure induce differences in per capita output growth between regions. To explore this questions we carried out a spatial econom...

A spatial econometrics cross-section analysis of the NUTS2 regions of the EU15 is carried out to examine whether the age structure of the regional population or differences in the regional age pattern affect growth of regional per capita income. We apply two parsimonious models of the age structure and both provide evidence that there is such a lin...

The composition of the regional age pattern of the population and labour force within Europe and Germany is quiet heterogenous. Within the existing literature there is a debate on regional development and the possibility of depopulation. However, there is only limited evidence on the effect of the composition of the age pattern on regional producti...