Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/24450 
Year of Publication: 
2001
Series/Report no.: 
ZEW Discussion Papers No. 01-29
Publisher: 
Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW), Mannheim
Abstract: 
This paper presents estimates of the unification bonus for East Germans over the period 1991 to 1998. The unification bonus is defined as the discounted value of the difference between a person?s actual income and his or her counterfactual real income stream forecast for a hypothetical continuation of economic life in a static GDR. The two main issues tackled in this study are the construction of valid deflators for a comparison of real incomes during the transition from a centralized to a market economy and the estimation of plausible counterfactual income streams. Our central result is that 19 percent of East Germans received a present value malus and so can be regarded as unification losers but that the aggregate bonus is ten times the size of the aggregate malus of the sample.
Subjects: 
Real income comparison
income distribution and mobility
economies in transition
JEL: 
D3
D1
P2
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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