Even though wage inequality in West Germany started to rise at the top of the wage distribution in the 1980s, this rise was delayed for about ten years at the bottom. Our paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for full-time working males from 1999 to 2006. We find a noticeable increase of wage inequality during this time period. The difference of the log wages, measured at the 80th and the 20th percentile, rises by about 8 percentage points. Wage inequality increases by about the same extent both at the bottom and the top of the wage distribution. The most prominent explanation in the literature for the increase in wage inequality in the US and the UK is skill-biased technical change (SBTC) resulting in an increasing demand for more highly skilled labor (see the survey by Katz and Autor, 1999). The increase in demand is stronger than the parallel increases in the supply of more highly skilled labor. The developments in Germany for the 1980s are consistent with the SBTC hypothesis (Fitzenberger, 1999), if one allows for the possibility that growing wage inequality in the lower part of the wage distribution is prevented by labor market institutions such as unions and implicit minimum wages implied by the welfare state.

SummaryThis paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for full-time working males from 1999 to 2006. Our analysis builds on the task-based approach introduced by Autor et al. (2003), as implemented by Spitz-Oener (2006) for Germany, and also accounts for job complexity. We perform a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition of the changes in the entire wage distribution between 1999 and 2006 into the separate effects of personal characteristics and task assignments. In line with the literature, we find a noticeable increase of wage inequality between 1999 and 2006. The decomposition results show that the changes in personal characteristics explain some of the increase in wage inequality whereas the changes in task assignments strongly work towards reducing wage inequality. The coefficient effect for personal characteristics works towards an increase in wage inequality at the top of the wage distribution. The coefficient effect for the task assignments on the contrary shows an inverted U-shaped pattern. We conclude that altogether the task-based approach can not explain the recent increase of wage inequality in Germany.

Die Dis cus si on Pape rs die nen einer mög lichst schnel len Ver brei tung von neue ren For schungs arbei ten des ZEW. Die Bei trä ge lie gen in allei ni ger Ver ant wor tung der Auto ren und stel len nicht not wen di ger wei se die Mei nung des ZEW dar.Dis cus si on Papers are inten ded to make results of ZEW research prompt ly avai la ble to other eco no mists in order to encou ra ge dis cus si on and sug gesti ons for revi si ons. The aut hors are sole ly respon si ble for the con tents which do not neces sa ri ly repre sent the opi ni on of the ZEW. Non-technical summaryThe career prospects of young academics in Germany are the subject of an intensive public debate. During the early 2000s, the academic career path was characterized by the availability of only few tenured professorships, high rates of dropout from an academic career both right after completion of a PhD and at further stages as a postdoc, disproportionately high rates of dropouts by females, and a high average age of appointment to a full professorship. In the public debate, it is argued that postdocs in Germany are not sufficiently independent and that there are insufficient incentives to engage in excellent research. Furthermore, postdocs in Germany often seem to lack clear career perspectives.There is concern that excellent young academics leave Germany because of better working conditions and career prospects in countries like the U.S., or they choose to pursue a non-academic career after completion of a PhD. Responding to some of these concerns, the German government implemented a number of reforms during the 2000s, which aimed at improving the attractiveness of an academic career in Germany. Part of the reforms was the introduction of assistant professorships ('Juniorprofessor'), which should provide a more independent alternative to the 'Habilitation'. In addition, a new salary system with more flexible and performance-oriented payment was introduced.Based on an online survey among postdocs in the fields of economics, business economics, sociology, and social sciences, this paper provides evidence on the perceptions and attitudes of postdocs regarding their research incentives, working conditions, and career prospects. Our data also allow to draw conclusions with respect to gender differences, especially in relation to parenthood. Based on a cluster analysis, we identify three types of postdocs, motivated optimists, confident academics, and frustrated academics, which differ with respect to age, gender, and the way they have obtained their PhD. Overall, the motivated optimists are more likely to have graduated from a PhD program rather than at the chair of a professor and they are more likely to be business economists. They are predominantly male and are on average younger than the confident academics and the frustrated academics. The latter might also explain the optimism among the motivated optimists, as career prospects are shown to deteriorate with age. In contrast, over 50% of all postdocs are pessimistic with regard to their acad...

Academic careers in Germany have been under debate for a while. We conduct a survey among postdocs in Germany to analyze the perceptions and attitudes of postdocs regarding their research incentives, their working conditions, and their career prospects. We conceptualize the career prospects of a postdoc in a life-cycle perspective of transitions from academic training to academic or non-academic jobs. Only about half of the postdocs sees strong incentives for academic research, but there is quite a strong confidence to succeed in an academic career. Furthermore, postdocs who attended a PhD program show better career prospects and higher research incentives compared to others. Academic career prospects and motivation are strongest for assistant professors. Apart from this small group, however, postdocs report only a small impact of the university reforms of the last decade. Female postdocs show significantly higher research incentives but otherwise we find little gender differences. Finally, good prospects in non-academic jobs are not associated with a reduction in the motivation for research. Freiburg, Germany, E-mail: bernd.fitzenberger@vwl.uni-freiburg.de. * * University of Freiburg. E-mail: ute.schulze@vwl.uni-freiburg.de.We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. We acknowledge financial support by the newspaper Handelsblatt. In January 2009, the Handelsblatt published an article written by Doris Heß, which was based on the same data set as this work (Heß, 2009). We thank all participants of our online-survey for providing the data used in this study, and we thank Alexandra Spitz-Oener for helpful comments. We are grateful to Maximilian Blömer for excellent assistance in setting up the online survey. The responsibility for all errors is, of course, ours. Our additional appendix available on www.empiwifo.uni-freiburg.de/discussion-papers-1 provides further informations.

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