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Eine Million Euro Steuergeld für jeden JobReint GroppDer Spiegel, 18. Mai 2026
Using a large administrative data set for Germany, this article compares employment developments in exiting and surviving establishments. Applying a matching approach, we find a clear “shadow of death” effect reflecting lingering illness: in both West and East Germany establishments shrink dramatically already several years before closure, employment growth rates differ strongly between exiting and surviving establishments, and this difference becomes stronger as exit approaches. Moreover, we provide first evidence that prior to exit the workforce becomes on average more skilled, more female, and older in exiting compared to surviving establishments. These effects are more clearly visible in West than in East Germany.
Building on the right-to-manage model of collective bargaining, this paper tries to infer union power from the observed results in wage setting. It derives a time-varying indicator of union strength taking account of taxation, unemployment benefits, and the labour market situation and confronts this indicator with annual data for Germany. The results show that union power did not change much from 1992 to 2002 but fell markedly (by about one-third) from 2002 to 2007 in the aftermath of substantial labour market reforms.
Using comprehensive data for West Germany, this paper investigates the determinants of establishment exit. We find that between 1975 and 2006 the average exit rate has risen considerably. In order to test various “liabilities” of establishment survival identified in the literature, we analyzed the impact of establishment size and put a special focus on differences between young and mature establishments. Our empirical analysis shows that the mortality risk falls with establishment size, which confirms the liability of smallness. The probability of exit is substantially higher for young establishments which are not more than 5 years old, thus confirming the liability of newness. There also exists a liability of aging since exit rates first decline over time, reaching a minimum at ages 15–18, and then rise again somewhat. The determinants of exit differ substantially between young and mature establishments, suggesting that young establishments are more vulnerable in a number of ways.
Using a large German linked employer–employee data set and methods of competing risks analysis, this paper investigates gender differences in job separation rates to employment and nonemployment. In line with descriptive evidence, we find lower job-to-job and higher job-to-nonemployment transition probabilities for women than men when controlling for individual and workplace characteristics and unobserved plant heterogeneity. These differences vanish once we allow these characteristics to affect separations differently by gender. When additionally controlling for wages, we find that both separation rates are considerably lower and also significantly less wage-elastic for women than for men, suggesting an interplay of gender differences in transition behaviour and the gender pay gap.
Using a large linked employer–employee dataset for Germany with a direct plant-level measure of product market competition and controlling for job-cell fixed effects, we investigate whether relative wages of women benefit from strong competition. We find that the unexplained gender pay gap is about 2.4 log points lower in West German plants that face strong product market competition than in those experiencing weak competition, whereas no such link shows up for East Germany.
Using a large linked employer–employee data set for Germany, we find that the existence of a works council is associated with a lower separation rate to employment, in particular for workers with low tenure. While works council monopoly effects show up in all specifications, clear voice effects are only visible for low tenured workers. Works councils also reduce separations to nonemployment, and this impact is more pronounced for men. Insurance effects only show up for workers with tenure of more than 2 years. Our results indicate that works councils to some extent represent the interests of a specific clientele.
This article investigates women’s and men’s labor supply to the firm within a semistructural approach based on a dynamic model of new monopsony. Using methods of survival analysis and a large linked employer‐employee data set for Germany, we find that labor supply elasticities are small (1.9–3.7) and that women’s labor supply to the firm is less elastic than men’s (which is the reverse of gender differences in labor supply usually found at the level of the market). Our results imply that at least one‐third of the gender pay gap might be wage discrimination by profit‐maximizing monopsonistic employers.
