Why Do People Still Live in East Germany?

By Jennifer Hunt. Social Science Research Network, 2000

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In 1997 GDP per capita in East Germany was 57% of that of West Germany, wage rates were 75% of western levels, and the unemployment rate was at least double the western rate of 7.8%. One would expect that if capital flows and trade in goods failed to bring convergence, labor flows would respond, enhancing overall efficiency. Yet net emigration from East Germany has fallen from high levels in 1989-1990 to close to zero. Using state-level data for all of Germany, available from 1991-1996, I am able to explain the downward trend in east to west migration using wage and unemployment information. Convergence in hourly wages is the most important factor. Analysis of the eastern sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1990-1997 suggests that commuting is unlikely to substitute substantially for emigration. The individual-level data further indicate that emigrants are disproportionately young and skilled, and that individuals suffering a layoff or non-employment spell are also much more likely to emigrate.

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Citations in the corpus

The Caring Hand that Cripples: The East German Labor Market after Reunification (Detailed Version) (2006, unknown): “Burda and Hunt (2001) and Jennifer Hunt (2000) write that movers are on average eleven to 24Own calculations.”
The Anatomy of Subjective Well-Being (2003, unknown): “Given that transition frequencies are small, the impact of this simplifying assumption cannot large (Hunt 1999, 2000).”
To Go or Not to Go: Emigration from Germany (2006, background): “These studies, however, exclude many groups of (potential) emigrants by focusing on highly educated individuals.2 Hunt (2000) looks at emigration patterns for a larger sample, but restricts her analysis to migration of East Germans to West Germany.”
From Reunification to Economic Integration: Productivity and the Labor Market in Eastern Germany (2001, unknown): “Hunt (2000, 2001a).”
The Transition in East Germany: When Is a Ten‐Point Fall in the Gender Wage Gap Bad News? (2002, unknown): “7 Hunt (2000a) shows that men and women are equally likely to emigrate to the west but that women with children are much less likely to commute to the west.”
Do the best go west? An analysis of the self-selection of employed East-West migrants in Germany (2007, unknown): “While Schwarze (1996) finds that the wage differential affects individual migration probabilities positively, the results of Hunt (2000) and Burda, Härdle, Müller, and Werwatz (1998) indicate that no unambiguous correlation between the wage differential and the propensity to migrate exists.”
Subsidizing Education in the Economic Periphery: Another Pitfall of Regional Policies? (2002, unknown): “It is well established that geographical mobility increases with the individual skill level (see Gianetti, 2001; Hunt, 2000; Mauro/Spilimbergo, 1999).”