IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp8.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Das Entsendegesetz: Suendenfall oder Loesung des Arbeitslosigkeitsproblems?

Author

Listed:
  • Rotte, Ralph

    (RWTH Aachen University)

  • Zimmermann, Klaus F.

    (University of Bonn)

Abstract

In March 1996, the Bundestag introduced a minimum wage law for the German construction business in order to protect native workers from low wage competition by posted workers from other EU countries. This Entsendegesetz (Posted Workers Act) was backed formally by the EU Posted Workers Directive of December 1996. This paper analyzes the economic and political background of the law as well as its impact on the German construction business according to economic theory and provisional empirical evidence from similar protective measures taken in the U.S. The effectiveness of the law is seriously limited by practical and conceptional problems, like resource constraints in control, shifts from legal to illegal employment, or compatibility with basic EU law and principles. Moreover, since the central problems of the German construction business are structural, one cannot expect much of a relief for the labor market of native workers. Since the Entsendegesetz seems therefore only justifiable in the short run in order to smoothen structural adjustment and to avoid political unrest and xenophobia, it should not be extended.

Suggested Citation

  • Rotte, Ralph & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 1998. "Das Entsendegesetz: Suendenfall oder Loesung des Arbeitslosigkeitsproblems?," IZA Discussion Papers 8, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp8.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    2. Charles Brown & Curtis Gilroy & Andrew Kohen, 1982. "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Unemployment: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 0846, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Klaus F. Zimmermann, 1995. "Tackling the European Migration Problems," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 45-62, Spring.
    4. Brown, Charles & Gilroy, Curtis & Kohen, Andrew, 1982. "The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Employment and Unemployment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 487-528, June.
    5. Machin, Stephen & Manning, Alan, 1996. "Employment and the Introduction of a Minimum Wage in Britain," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(436), pages 667-676, May.
    6. Noll, Bernd, 1996. "Zwischenruf oder Nachlese zum Arbeitnehmer-Entsendegesetz?," Wirtschaftsdienst – Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik (1949 - 2007), ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 76(8), pages 418-424.
    7. Volker Rußig, 1996. "Bauwirtschaft in Deutschland : beschleunigter Strukturwandel," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 49(25-26), pages 14-29, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Volker Meier & Sonja Munz, 2008. "Employment effects of minimum wages disregards those most affected: Comment on the position of König and Möller," ifo Schnelldienst, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 61(15), pages 30-32, August.
    2. Rotte, Ralph, 1998. "Sorties from the Fortress: The Current System of Anti-Immigration Policy in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 13, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Juan J. Dolado & Florentino Felgueroso & Juan F. Jimeno, 2000. "The Role of the Minimum Wage in the Welfare State: An Appraisal," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 136(III), pages 223-245, September.
    2. Dolado, Juan José & Felgueroso, Florentino, 1997. "Los efectos del salario mínimo : Evidencia empírica el caso español," DE - Documentos de Trabajo. Economía. DE 3880, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    3. Dickens, Richard & Machin, Stephen & Manning, Alan, 1998. "Estimating the effect of minimum wages on employment from the distribution of wages: A critical view," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 109-134, June.
    4. Omar Al-Ubaydli & John A. List, 2019. "How natural field experiments have enhanced our understanding of unemployment," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 33-39, January.
    5. David Neumark, 2019. "The Econometrics and Economics of the Employment Effects of Minimum Wages: Getting from Known Unknowns to Known Knowns," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 20(3), pages 293-329, August.
    6. Roy E. Bailey & Timothy J. Hatton & Kris Inwood, 2016. "Atmospheric Pollution and Child Health in Late Nineteenth Century Britain," CEH Discussion Papers 052, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    7. Lucia Pániková & Martina Brezová, 2011. "Influence of minimum wage on labour market – case of Slovak Republic," EcoMod2011 3512, EcoMod.
    8. Machin, Stephen & Manning, Alan & Rahman, Lupin, 2002. "Where the minimum wage bites hard: the introduction of the UK national minimum wage to a low wage sector," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20070, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Zsófia L. Bárány, 2016. "The Minimum Wage and Inequality: The Effects of Education and Technology," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 237-274.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4jgjdlef848r49dq2dv8go26r7 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Tomas Kucera, 2020. "Are Employment Effects of Minimum Wage the Same Across the EU? A Meta-Regression Analysis," Working Papers IES 2020/2, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Jan 2020.
    12. David Neumark, 2018. "Employment effects of minimum wages," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 1-6, December.
    13. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2101-2163 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Peter Hull & Michal Kolesár & Christopher Walters, 2022. "Labor by design: contributions of David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 603-645, July.
    15. Pandelis Mitsis, 2015. "Effects of Minimum Wages on Total Employment: Evidence from Cyprus," Journal of Labor Research, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 318-345, September.
    16. Dolton, Peter & Rosazza-Bondibene, Chiara & Wadsworth, Jonathan, 2010. "Employment, inequality and the UK National Minimum Wage over the medium-term," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121715, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Joseph Marchand, 2017. "Thinking about Minimum Wage Increases in Alberta: Theoretically, Empirically, and Regionally," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 491, pages 1-20, September.
    18. Peng Jia, 2014. "Employment and Working Hour Effects of Minimum Wage Increase: Evidence from China," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 22(2), pages 61-80, March.
    19. Young Cheol Jung & Adian McFarlane & Anupam Das, 2021. "The effect of minimum wages on consumption in Canada," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 32(1), pages 65-89, March.
    20. Richard Dickens & Stephen Machin & Alan Manning & David Metcalf & Jonathan Wadsworth & Stephen Woodland, 1995. "The Effect Of Minimum Wages On Uk Agriculture," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 1-19, January.
    21. Bamikole, Oluwafemi, 2013. "The Impact of Minimum Wage on Average Earnings in the Caribbean using Two-Selected Countries, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica (1980-2011 and 1997-2011)," MPRA Paper 57363, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. George Economides & Thomas Moutos, 2014. "Minimum Wages as a Redistributive Device in the Long Run," CESifo Working Paper Series 5052, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    construction business; labor market effects of immigration; immigration policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J49 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Other
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:iza:izadps:dp8. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.