Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/145305 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
ifo Working Paper No. 216
Publisher: 
ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, Munich
Abstract: 
We analyze the most important drivers of the recent rise in overall German wage dispersion and pin down the relative contribution of central establishment and worker characteristics. Moreover, we separately investigate the drivers of between as well as withinestablishment wage dispersion. Using rich linked employer-employee data for the Germanmanufacturing sector between 1996 and 2010, we explicitly account for the role of a plant’scollective bargaining regime, its technological status and its export behavior. In order todisentangle the contribution of each single variable to the rise in wage dispersion, relativeto other variables, requires a rich and comprehensive framework. To this end we apply astate-of-the-art decomposition method which is based on recentered influence function (RIF)regressions. We find that the decline in collective bargaining coverage as well as changesin the skill- and occupation-related wage structure are main sources of increased overallwage dispersion. Regional employment shifts, differences between collectively covered anduncovered plants and increased sorting play a key role for changes in between establishmentwage dispersion, while the technology intenstiy of a plant is the most important driver ofwithin plant wage inequality
Subjects: 
Wage inequality
Decomposition
RIF-Regression
Linked employeremployee data
JEL: 
J31
F16
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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