Building the Minimum Wage: Germany's First Sectoral Minimum Wage and its Impact on Wages in the Construction Industry
40 Pages Posted: 28 Mar 2011
Date Written: March 2011
Abstract
The very first minimum wage in Germany was introduced in 1997 for blue-collar workers in sub-sectors of the construction industry. In the setting of a natural experiment blue-collar workers in neighboring 4-digit-industries and white-collar workers are used as control groups for differences-in-differences-in-differences estimation based on linked employer-employee data. Estimation results reveal a sizable positive average impact on wages in East Germany and no effect in West Germany. Size and significance of effects are not homogeneous across wage regimes (individual vs. collective contracts) and across the distribution suggesting spillover effects to wages where the minimum is not binding.
Keywords: Minimum wage, construction sector, linked employer-employee data, differences-in-differences-in-differences, unconditional quantile regression
JEL Classification: C21, J18, J38
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders: Estimates Using Contiguous Counties
By Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, ...
-
Does a Higher Minimum Wage Enhance the Effectiveness of the Earned Income Tax Credit?
By David Neumark and William Wascher
-
By David Neumark and William Wascher
-
Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater?
By David Neumark, John Michael Ian S Salas, ...
-
Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate: Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater?
By David Neumark, John Michael Ian S Salas, ...
-
Do Frictions Matter in the Labor Market? Accessions, Separations and Minimum Wage Effects
By Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, ...
-
Minimum Wage Channels of Adjustment
By Barry T. Hirsch, Bruce Evan Kaufman, ...