Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/58461 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2012
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 6274
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Empirical investigations with enterprise level data from official statistics often use the average wage as a proxy variable for the qualification of the workforce, mostly due to the lack of detailed information on the qualification of the employees. This paper uses unique newly available data for German enterprises from the KombiFiD project that for the first time combine information from the statistics of employees covered by social security and information from surveys performed by the Statistical Offices to look at the quality of this proxy variable by investigating the link between the average wage in a firm and the qualification of the workforce. Furthermore, it demonstrates that detailed information on the qualification of the workforce sheds new light on the role of highly qualified employees for success on export markets that is not revealed by the average wage as a proxy variable. Based on the results of this paper it is argued that combined firm level data that stem from different data producers should be widely accessible for research.
Subjects: 
qualification of workforce
average wage
export
firm level data
JEL: 
C81
F14
J31
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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