TY  - JOUR
AU  - Hunt,Jennifer
TI  - Post-Unification Wage Growth in East Germany
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6878
PY  - 1999
Y2  - January 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6878
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6878.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jennifer Hunt
Department of Economics
Rutgers University
New Jersey Hall
75 Hamilton Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248
Tel: (732) 932-7363
E-Mail: jennifer.hunt@rutgers.edu
AB  - Following monetary union with west Germany in June 1990, the median real monthly wage of prime age east German workers rose by 83% in six years.  I use the German Socio-Economic Panel data to investigate the determinants of this wage growth and some of its implications.  For the 1990-1991 period I find that the biggest gainers were low-wage workers generally, and women and the less educated specifically.  In the 1991-1996 period the biggest gainers were women and the better educated.  Job changing rates were high; a majority of workers had changed jobs by 1996.  The return to job changing, particularly changing to a job in the west, was high in 1990-1991 but fell greatly in the later period, so that overall only 18% of wage growth was due to job changing within the east, and 7% to east-west job changing.
ER  -