IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijmpps/v30y2009i7p716-741.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Impacts of minimum wages: a microdata analysis for the German construction sector

Author

Listed:
  • Marion König
  • Joachim Möller

Abstract

Purpose - In 1997 minimum wages were introduced in the West and East German construction sector. The purpose of this paper is to analyze their impact on wage growth and employment retention probability of affected workers. Design/methodology/approach - Following a difference‐in‐differences approach the paper proposes a method to identify the effects of this quasi‐experiment despite the lack of information on working hours in the large panel microdata. The method determines the size of the treatment and control group by the maximum likelihood criterion. Findings - All results show positive wage growth effects of the minimum wage regulation in both parts of the country. When it comes to employment effects, the results clearly differ between the two parts of the country. The employment effects are negative for East Germany and positive for West Germany, although the latter are not always statistically significant. Research limitations/implications - Although there is a limit to the simple transferability of the results for the construction sector to other industries, the study provides some useful insights for this country concerning reactions to the minimum wage. This is the first paper analyzing the effect of minimum wages in Germany using microeconometric methods. Practical implications - As the minimum wage in the East German construction sector was much higher in relation to the median wage than in West Germany, a tentative conclusion of the different employment results might be that the trade‐off between increasing wages for low‐paid workers and the danger of job losses does not exist in this case if minimum wages are moderate. Originality/value - This paper provides valuable information on the impact of wage growth and employment retention probability in Germany.

Suggested Citation

  • Marion König & Joachim Möller, 2009. "Impacts of minimum wages: a microdata analysis for the German construction sector," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 30(7), pages 716-741, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:30:y:2009:i:7:p:716-741
    DOI: 10.1108/01437720910997362
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437720910997362/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/01437720910997362/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/01437720910997362?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brown, Alessio J.G. & Merkl, Christian & Snower, Dennis J., 2014. "The minimum wage from a two-sided perspective," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 389-391.
    2. Mario Bossler, 2017. "Employment expectations and uncertainties ahead of the new German minimum wage," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(4), pages 327-348, September.
    3. Mario Bossler & Hans-Dieter Gerner, 2020. "Employment Effects of the New German Minimum Wage: Evidence from Establishment-Level Microdata," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 73(5), pages 1070-1094, October.
    4. Möller, Joachim & Bender, Stefan & König, Marion & vom Berge, Philipp & Umkehrer, Matthias & Wolter, Stefanie & Schaffner, Sandra & Bachmann, Ronald & Kröger, Hanna & Janßen-Timmen, Ronald & Paloyo, A, 2011. "Evaluation bestehender gesetzlicher Mindestlohnregelungen: Branche: Bauhauptgewerbe. Forschungsauftrag des Bundesministeriums für Arbeit und Soziales (BMAS). Endbericht," RWI Projektberichte, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, number 72591.
    5. Carsten Schröder, 2014. "Kosten und Nutzen von Mindestlöhnen," DIW Roundup: Politik im Fokus 22, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Marcus Dittrich, 2010. "Minimum Wages and Unemployment Benefits in a Unionized Economy: A Game-Theoretic Approach," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 11(2), pages 209-229, November.
    7. Demir, Gökay, 2023. "Labor Market Frictions and Spillover Effects from Publicly Announced Sectoral Minimum Wages," IZA Discussion Papers 16204, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Bachmann, Ronald & König, Marion & Schaffner, Sandra, 2012. "Lost in Transition? Minimum Wage Effects on German Construction Workers," IZA Discussion Papers 6760, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Philipp Berge & Hanna Frings, 2020. "High-impact minimum wages and heterogeneous regions," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 701-729, August.
    10. Arni, Patrick & Eichhorst, Werner & Pestel, Nico & Spermann, Alexander & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 2014. "Kein Mindestlohn ohne unabhängige wissenschaftliche Evaluation," IZA Standpunkte 65, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Demir, Gökay, 2022. "Labor market frictions and spillover effects from publicly announced sectoral minimum wages," Ruhr Economic Papers 985, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    12. Backhaus, Teresa & Müller, Kai-Uwe, 2019. "Does the German minimum wage benefit low income households?," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203585, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    13. Marco Caliendo & Alexandra Fedorets & Malte Preuss & Carsten Schröder & Linda Wittbrodt, 2023. "The short- and medium-term distributional effects of the German minimum wage reform," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 1149-1175, March.
    14. Werner, Thomas & Sell, Friedrich L. & Reinisch, David C., 2013. "Price effects of minimum wages: Evidence from the construction sector in East and West Germany," Working Papers in Economics 2013,4, Bundeswehr University Munich, Economic Research Group.
    15. Chung-Khain Wye & Elya Nabila Abdul Bahri, 2021. "How does employment respond to minimum wage adjustment in China?," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 32(1), pages 90-114, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:ijmpps:v:30:y:2009:i:7:p:716-741. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.