Discussion paper
DP13005 The regional effects of Germany’s national minimum wage
We estimate the spatially differential effects of a nationally uniform minimum wage that was introduced in Germany in 2015. To this end, we use a micro data set covering the universe of employed and unemployed individ-uals in Germany from 2011 to 2016 and a difference-in-differences based identification strategy that controls for heterogeneity in pre-treatment outcome trends. We find that the policy led to spatial wage convergence, in par-ticular in the left tail of the distribution, without reducing relative employment in low-wage regions within the first two years.
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