This paper reconsiders the impact of different remuneration systems on aggregate employment. Contrary to common wisdom on this topic, we show that the switch from a ®xed wage economy to a share economy results in lower aggregate unemployment. An additional innovation of this paper is the endogeneity of the capital stock decision of the ®rm, which enables us to assess and reject the common``disincentive-to-invest'' criticism of a share economy.

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In this article we describe and analyze the career paths of academic economists employed at German universities. We construct a unique data set combining information from publicly available sources and a web-based poll. The data set covers CV information of 583 individuals that are either tenured or in their post-doc phase. This allows us to document and to analyze patterns of typical career paths and the changes of these patterns over time. Copyright 2008 die Autoren Journal compilation 2008, Verein für Socialpolitik und Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Wage hikes affect production costs and hence are usually analysed as supply shocks. There is a longstanding debate, however, about demand effects of wage variations. In this paper, we bring together these two arguments in a Kaldorian model with group-specific saving rates and a production technology that allows for redistribution between workers and entrepreneurs following a wage hike. We thereby pinpoint the conditions under which (a) wage variations affect aggregate demand and (b) the positive demand effects of wage hikes may even overcompensate the negative supply effects on aggregate employment ('purchasing power argument'). We conclude by noting that, whereas demand effects are very likely to occur, the conditions under which the purchasing power argument does indeed hold are very unrealistic.