IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/rwirep/598.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effect of minimum wages on labour market flows: Evidence from Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Bachmann, Ronald
  • Penninger, Marion
  • Schaffner, Sandra

Abstract

Using a linked employer-employee data set on the German construction industry, we analyse the effects of the introduction of minimum wages in this sector on labour market dynamics at the establishment level, i.e. turnover and churning flows, as well as accessions and separations and their underlying worker flows. The fact that minimum wages in Germany are sector-specific enables us to apply a between approach using other industries as control groups in a difference-in-differences framework. Furthermore, we use a within approach with high-wage workers as control group. While the within approach shows that the minimum wage reduced worker flows in East Germany, the between approach yields positive effect on labour market dynamics in West Germany. Our results can be explained by differences between East and West Germany with respect to the bite of the minimum wage, as well as the much higher prevalence of posted workers in West Germany. Furthermore, spillover effects to highwage workers are likely to have played a role in East Germany.

Suggested Citation

  • Bachmann, Ronald & Penninger, Marion & Schaffner, Sandra, 2015. "The effect of minimum wages on labour market flows: Evidence from Germany," Ruhr Economic Papers 598, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:rwirep:598
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/125816/1/845303481.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arindrajit Dube & T. William Lester & Michael Reich, 2016. "Minimum Wage Shocks, Employment Flows, and Labor Market Frictions," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(3), pages 663-704.
    2. Bodo Aretz & Melanie Arntz & Terry Gregory, 2013. "The Minimum Wage Affects Them All: Evidence on Employment Spillovers in the Roofing Sector," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 14(3), pages 282-315, August.
    3. Pedro Portugal & Ana Rute Cardoso, 2006. "Disentangling the Minimum Wage Puzzle: An Analysis of Worker Accessions and Separations," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(5), pages 988-1013, September.
    4. Hanna Frings, 2013. "The Employment Effect of Industry-Specific, Collectively Bargained Minimum Wages," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 14(3), pages 258-281, August.
    5. vom Berge, Philipp & Frings, Hanna & Paloyo, Alfredo R., 2013. "High-Impact Minimum Wages and Heterogeneous Regions," Ruhr Economic Papers 408, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    6. Pia Rattenhuber, 2014. "Building the minimum wage: the distributional impact of Germany’s first sectoral minimum wage on wages and hours across different wage bargaining regimes," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 1429-1446, June.
    7. repec:spr:inrvec:v:45:y:2012:i:3:p:257-277 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Ronald Bachmann & Thomas K. Bauer & Hanna Frings, 2014. "Minimum Wages as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from Germany," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(3), pages 338-357, September.
    9. repec:zbw:rwirep:0408 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Apel, Helmut & Bachmann, Ronald & Bender, Stefan & Vom Berge, Philipp & Fertig, Michael & Frings, Hanna & König, Marion & Möller, Joachim & Paloyo, Alfredo R. & Schaffner, Sandra & Tamm, Marcus & Umke, 2012. "Arbeitsmarktwirkungen der Mindestlohneinführung im Bauhauptgewerbe," EconStor Open Access Articles, ZBW - German National Library of Economics, pages 257-277.
    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. Bossler, Mario & Gerner, Hans-Dieter, 2016. "Employment effects of the new German minimum wage: Evidence from establishment-level micro data," Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145926, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. vom Berge, Philipp & Frings, Hanna & Paloyo, Alfredo R., 2013. "High-Impact Minimum Wages and Heterogeneous Regions," Ruhr Economic Papers 408, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    3. Bossler, Mario & Gerner, Hans-Dieter, 2016. "Employment effects of the new German minimum wage : evidence from establishment-level micro data," IAB Discussion Paper 201610, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].

    More about this item

    Keywords

    minimum wage; labour market flows; difference-in-difference; linked employer-employee;

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
    • J42 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Monopsony; Segmented Labor Markets
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:rwirep:598. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (ZBW - German National Library of Economics). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/rwiesde.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.