P.I.: Markus Gangl
R.A.: Fabian Ochsenfeld
Funding: LOEWE-Centre Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Duration: 7/2013-12/2014

The project aims to provide empirical estimates of changing industry rents in Germany since the 1970s, to contribute evidence on demand-side, technological and corporate governance sources of (changes in) rent acquisition, and to situate trends observed for the German wage distribution relative to the received literature that has mostly focused on the U.S. experience so far. Informed by structural labor market theory in sociology and the industry wage differentials literature in labor economics, the project will provide empirical estimates of task- (occupation-/class-) specific industry rents and their change over time in Germany. Specifically, the project will establish whether trends in task-specific industry rents in Germany have been similar to those observed in the United States, namely rent destruction in low-skill occupations and, more recently, rent creation in high-skill segments of the work force. The project will explore and potentially draw on multiple datasets in its empirical work, including the German Mikrozensus, the German Socio-Economic Panel and, potentially, the SIAB register data.