Occupational upgrading and the business cycle in West Germany

Thomas Büttner, Peter Jacobebbinghaus and Johannes Ludsteck

No 2009-34, Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: The occupational skill structure depends on the business cycle if employers respond to shortages of applicants during upturns by lowering their hiring standards. The notion and relevance of hiring standards adjustment was advanced by Reder and investigated formally in a search-theoretic framework by Mortensen. Devereux implements empirical tests for these theories and finds affirmative evidence for the U.S. labour market. We replicate his analysis using German employment register data. Regarding the occupational skill composition we obtain somewhat lower but qualitatively similar responses to the business cycle despite of well known institutional differences between the U.S. and German labour market. The responsiveness of occupational composition wages to the business cycle is considerably lower in Germany.

Keywords: Hiring standards; business cycle adjustment; occupational upgrading; wage structure; wage setting; overqualification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C24 J31 J41 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/discussionpapers/2009-34
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/27732/1/60625806X.PDF (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Occupational upgrading and the business cycle in West Germany (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwedp:200934

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics Discussion Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().