We demonstrate that almost one half of the observed wage gap between East and West Germany reflects differences in worker, establishment, and regional characteristics rather than differences in productivity at the establishment level. Regional price and establishment size differentials alone account for one quarter of the overall East-West wage gap. Differences in employees? characteristics and in productivity deliver much smaller but still statistically significant contributions. We derive these results from an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition using unusually rich linked employer-employee data. Our findings are quite stable over the period from 1996 to 2010 and over the wage distribution.

中文翻译：

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分解德国东西方的工资差距

我们证明，东德和西德之间观察到的工资差距中几乎有一半反映了工人，机构和地区特征的差异，而不是机构层面的生产率差异。仅地区价格和机构规模差异就占整个东西方工资差距的四分之一。员工差异？特性和生产力方面的贡献要小得多，但在统计上仍然很重要。我们使用异常丰富的关联雇主-雇员数据从Oaxaca-Blinder分解中得出这些结果。我们的发现在1996年至2010年期间以及在工资分配方面相当稳定。