On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, michael wrote: > Beaudry, Paul and David A. Green. 2003. "Wages and Employment in the > United States and Germany: What Explains the Difference?" American > Economic Review, 93: 3 (June): pp. 573-602.
The first thing that would come to my mind is that the German educational system is very different than the US's. We have common school high schools. Germany has a stark separation between vocational high schools and academic preparatory ones. And the vocational high schools are attached to apprentice systems. The result, I would think, is that if you compare people in both countries who only have a high school education, the German group would actually be much better equipped to get a job in terms of both training and connections. The second thought would be that the German union system, while weaker than it used to be, is still immeasurably stronger than it is in the US, especially in its mitbestimmung aspects (labor reps on company boards, labor/management councils with paid reps even in stores where most of the unionized), and that too would contribute to a flatter wage structure. And lastly is an old fashioned broad prejudice against obscene executive pay. American upper management wages shot up, what, 300 times from 1980 to 2000? Germans are still capable of getting outraged when they hear about 30 million dollar golden parachutes. So if the extreme is flattened, so would the differential. Michael
