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This study quantifies the distributional effects of the minimum wage introduced in Germany in 2015. Using detailed Socio-Economic Panel survey data, we assess changes in the hourly wages, working hours, and monthly wages of employees who were entitled to be paid the minimum wage. We employ a difference-in-differences analysis, exploiting regional variation in the “bite” of the minimum wage. At the bottom of the hourly wage distribution, we document wage growth of 9% in the short term and 21% in the medium term. At the same time, we find a reduction in working hours, such that the increase in hourly wages does not lead to a subortionate increase in monthly wages. We conclude that working hours adjustments play an important role in the distributional effects of minimum wages.
We assess the short-term employment effects of the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015. For this purpose, we exploit variation in the regional treatment intensity, assuming that the stronger a minimum wage ‘bites’ into the regional wage distribution, the stronger the regional labour market will be affected. In contrast to previous studies, we construct two regional bite indicators based upon detailed individual wage data from the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) 2014 and combine it with administrative information on regional employment. Moreover, using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we are able to affirm the absence of anticipation effects and verify the assumption of a common trend in wages before the reform. In sum, we find only moderate negative effects on overall employment of about 140,000 (0.4%) jobs, which are mainly driven by a sharp decline of marginal employment (‘mini-jobs’), while we do not find pronounced significant effects for regular employment in most specifications. Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests.
Experimental evidence reveals that there is a strong willingness to trust and to act in both positively and negatively reciprocal ways. So far it is rarely analyzed whether these variables of social cognition influence everyday decision making behavior. We focus on entrepreneurs who are permanently facing exchange processes in the interplay with investors, sellers, and buyers, as well as needing to trust others and reciprocate with their network. We base our analysis on the German Socio-Economic Panel with its recently introduced questions about trust, positive reciprocity, and negative reciprocity to examine the extent that these variables influence the entrepreneurial decision processes. More specifically, we analyze whether (i) the willingness to trust other people influences the probability of starting a business; (ii) trust, positive reciprocity, and negative reciprocity influence the exit probability of entrepreneurs; and (iii) willingness to trust and to act reciprocally influences the probability of being an entrepreneur versus an employee or a manager. Our findings reveal that, in particular, trust impacts entrepreneurial development. Interestingly, entrepreneurs are more trustful than employees, but much less trustful than managers.