Wage Mobility in East and West Germany

Regina Riphahn and Daniel Schnitzlein

No 6246, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This article studies the long run patterns and explanations of wage mobility as a characteristic of regional labor markets. Using German administrative data we describe wage mobility since 1975 in West and since 1992 in East Germany. Wage mobility declined substantially in East Germany in the 1990s and moderately in East and West Germany since the late 1990s. Therefore, wage mobility does not balance recent increases in cross-sectional wage inequality. We apply RIF (recentered influence function) regression based decompositions to measure the role of potential explanatory factors behind these mobility changes. Increasing job stability is an important factor associated with the East German mobility decline.

Keywords: administrative data; Shorrocks index; transition matrix; inequality; East Germany; Germany; income mobility; earnings mobility; wage mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 J30 J31 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2011-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lab, nep-lma, nep-ltv and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2016, 39 , 11-34

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Related works:
Journal Article: Wage mobility in East and West Germany (2016)
Working Paper: Wage Mobility in East and West Germany (2011)
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