IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/niesru/v201y2007i1p97-106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Human capital, job tasks and technology in East Germany after reunification

Author

Listed:
  • Alexandra Spitz-Oener

    (Department of Business and Economics, Humboldt-University, Berlin)

Abstract

At the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, employees in East Germany were at least as well educated as employees in West Germeny in terms of formal educational qualifications. However, it is unclear to what extent the skills and knowledge acquired through the East German education system, adn through employment in a socialist labour market, are transferable to the new market-based economy. This study aims to shed light on this issue by giving a comprehensive description of the work of those employees who remained employed after the first phase of restructuring (i.e. in 1991) in East Germany, and comparing it with work in West Germany. Overall, the similarity between workplaces in East and West Germany soon after reunicication is striking. In addition, the patterns of task changes between 1991 and 1999 were bery similar in both parts of Germany. Neither the level of task inputs in1991 nor the changes in task inputs between1991 and 1999 were driven by cohort effects, a surprising finding given how differently the age groups were affected by the historical event. The Largest difference between the east and the west exists in terms of wprkplace computerisation. Although East Germany has caught up rapidly, it was still laggin behind the west in terms of computer use in 1999.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandra Spitz-Oener, 2007. "Human capital, job tasks and technology in East Germany after reunification," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 201(1), pages 97-106, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:niesru:v:201:y:2007:i:1:p:97-106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ner.sagepub.com/content/201/1/97.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Orlowski, Robert & Riphahn, Regina T., 2008. "The East German Wage Structure after Transition," IZA Discussion Papers 3861, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Fuchs-Schündeln, Nicola & Izem, Rima, 2012. "Explaining the low labor productivity in East Germany – A spatial analysis," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 1-21.
    3. Robert Orlowski & Regina T. Riphahn, 2009. "The East German wage structure after transition1," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 17(4), pages 629-659, October.

    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:sae:niesru:v:201:y:2007:i:1:p:97-106. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/niesruk.html .

    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.