Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar.Dis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW.The Own-Wage Elasticity of Labor Demand: A Meta-Regression Analysis * Andreas LichterAndreas Peichl Sebastian SieglochFebruary 6, 2014Abstract Firms' labor demand responses to wage changes are of key interest in empirical research and policy analysis. However, despite extensive research, estimates of labor demand elasticities remain subject to considerable heterogeneity. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive meta-regression analysis to re-assess the empirical literature on labor demand elasticities. Building on 942 elasticity estimates from 105 different studies, we identify sources of variation in the absolute value of this elasticity. Heterogeneity due to the theoretical and empirical specification of the labor demand model, different datasets used or sectors and countries considered explains more than 80% of the variation in the estimates. We further find substantial evidence for the presence of publication selection bias, as estimates of the own-wage elasticity of labor demand are upwardly inflated.

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We investigate the long-run effects of government surveillance on civic capital and economic performance, studying the case of the Stasi in East Germany. Exploiting regional variation in the number of spies and administrative features of the system, we combine a border discontinuity design with an instrumental variable strategy to estimate the long-term, post-reunification effect of government surveillance. We find that a higher spying density led to persistently lower levels of interpersonal and institutional trust in post-reunification Germany. We also find substantial and long-lasting economic effects of Stasi surveillance, resulting in lower income, higher exposure to unemployment, and lower self-employment.

Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers within Socialist East Germany during the 1980s and accounting for potential endogeneity, we show that more intense regional surveillance led to lower levels of trust and reduced social activity in post-reunification Germany. We also find substantial and long-lasting economic effects of Stasi spying, resulting in lower self-employment, higher unemployment and larger out-migration throughout the 1990s and 2000s. We further show that these effects are due to surveillance and not alternative mechanisms. We argue that our findings have important implications for contemporary surveillance systems.

This paper studies the effects of the introduction of Germany’s statutory minimum wage in 2015 on employment and unemployment on the level of regional labor markets. Using variation in the regional exposure to the new wage floor, we employ a difference-in-differences approach that compares the evolution of employment and unemployment between regions with varying minimum wage bites. Overall, we find no statistically significant effect of the introduction of the German minimum wage on regular employment subject to social insurance, but a statistically significant negative effect on marginal employment. The reduction is not accompanied by a proportional increase in unemployment.