The Persistent Pay Gap between Easterners and Westerners in Germany: A Quarter‐century after Reunification

Heather Dickey; Alessa M. Widmaier

doi:10.1111/pirs.12594

The Persistent Pay Gap between Easterners and Westerners in Germany: A Quarter‐century after Reunification

Heather Dickey, Alessa M. Widmaier

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

113 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

A quarter of a century after Germany's reunification, Eastern Germans still earn substantially less than Western Germans. This paper revisits the German wage differential and isolates the effect of differing returns to human capital endowments, the possibility of a location effect, and human capital depreciation on the regional wage gap. While the endowment effect, location effect, and human capital depreciation jointly account for the wage differential between Easterners and Westerners living in the West, the same does not hold true for individuals settled in the East, where part of the wage gap remains unexplained.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	605-631
Number of pages	27
Journal	Papers in Regional Science
Volume	100
Issue number	3
Early online date	14 Jan 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/pirs.12594
Publication status	Published - Jun 2021

Keywords

German reunification
Wage differentials
decomposition
Quantile regressions

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1111/pirs.12594Licence: CC BY

The persistent pay gap between Easterners and Westerners in Germany: A quarter-century after reunification
Copyright 2021 the authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.
Final published version, 808 KBLicence: CC BY

https://rsaiconnect.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pirs.12594

3 Participation in conference
1 Oral presentation

The Persistent Pay Gap between Easterners and Westerners in Germany
Dickey, H. (Invited speaker)
12 May 2023
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Oral presentation
European Regional Science Association (ESRA) Congress
Dickey, H. (Participant)
22 Aug 2022 → 26 Aug 2022
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference
Global Conference on Economic Geography
Dickey, H. (Presenter)
07 Jun 2022 → 10 Jun 2022
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference

The Martin Beckmann RSAI Annual Award for the Best Paper in Papers in Regional Science
Dickey, H. (Recipient), Jun 2022
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)

Cite this

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abstract = "A quarter of a century after Germany's reunification, Eastern Germans still earn substantially less than Western Germans. This paper revisits the German wage differential and isolates the effect of differing returns to human capital endowments, the possibility of a location effect, and human capital depreciation on the regional wage gap. While the endowment effect, location effect, and human capital depreciation jointly account for the wage differential between Easterners and Westerners living in the West, the same does not hold true for individuals settled in the East, where part of the wage gap remains unexplained.",

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KW - decomposition

KW - Quantile regressions

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DO - 10.1111/pirs.12594

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JO - Papers in Regional Science

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The Persistent Pay Gap between Easterners and Westerners in Germany: A Quarter‐century after Reunification

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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Activities

The Persistent Pay Gap between Easterners and Westerners in Germany

European Regional Science Association (ESRA) Congress

Global Conference on Economic Geography

Prizes

The Martin Beckmann RSAI Annual Award for the Best Paper in Papers in Regional Science

Cite this