Lessons from the German Immigration Experience since the Beginning of the 1990s

Germany was particularly affected by the fall of the communist regimes in eastern European countries. Since the late 1980s, Germany was the destination of immigrants from many of the formerly communist countries. In addition, people from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) migrated to the western part of the country after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Within the first three years alone, more than 1.3 million Germans from East Germany migrated to West Germany and the West German labor force increased by 3.5 percent. In this project we analyze the importance of the degree of substitutability between migrants and natives when it comes to the labor market consequences of immigration? We also investigate how product market regulation influences the labor market impact of immigration.