Was ist am ostdeutschen Arbeitsmarkt anders?

Karl‐Heinz Paqué

Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, 2001, vol. 2, issue 4, 407-423

Abstract: This paper presents and evaluates two interpretations of the eastern German labour market. These interpretations are called ‘wage gap’ and ‘innovation gap’. The former follows standard neoclassical thinking and regards high eastern German unemployment as the consequence of too high a wage level. The latter follows endogenous growth theory and regards a lack of product innovations as the main constraint on output and employment growth in the eastern German economy. The paper argues that the ‘innovation gap’ explains the facts much better than the ‘wage gap’. From this, the paper draws conclusions for economic policy: given the high interregional mobility of the workforce and the erosion of collective bargaining in eastern Germany, the wage level is not an appropriate policy instrument anymore. Instead, policy should aim at strengthening the innovative power of the eastern German economy by supporting research and development in the region.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2516.00064

Related works:
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:bla:perwir:v:2:y:2001:i:4:p:407-423

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1465-6493

Access Statistics for this article

Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik is currently edited by Lars P. Feld, J¸rgen von Hagen, Bernd Rudolph and Achim Wambach

More articles in Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik from Verein für Socialpolitik Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().