The Employment Effect of Industry- Specific, Collectively Bargained Minimum Wages
Abstract This study estimates the employment effects of industry-specific, collectively bargained minimum wages in Germany for two occupations associated with the construction sector. I propose a truly exogenous control group in contrast to the control group design used in the literature. Further, a difference-in-differences-in-differences estimator is presented as a robustness test for occupation-specific and/or industry-specific, time-varying, unobserved heterogeneity. I do not find a significantly negative employment effect, even though the minimum wage is binding in (East) Germany. Possible explanations include substitution effects, non-compliance and models of monopsonic competition.
lected macro-variables in China. Johansenâ€™s cointegration tests fail to find a moving equilibrium among the related variables. Based on a VAR model in first differences, we find that an unexpected temporary one-off shock to the change in the seven-day money market interbank borrowing rate does not have significant influence on GDP changes but a significant influence on price level changes in a wrong direction. Empirical testing demonstrates that the seven-day Repo rate has an insignificant influence on both GDP changes and on the price level changes. Furthermore, the relationships between monetary aggregate (M2) and short-run money market interest rates suggest that the short-run interest rates do not have significant influence on the monetary aggregate. Therefore, we have determined that short-run money market interest rates are ineffective as a monetary policy-operating objective.