The Impact of the German Minimum Wage on the Labour Market: Evidence from Macro-Data

In this thesis I attempted to analyse the impact of the national minimum wage, imposed in 2015, on the German labour market. This analysis is completely based on macro-data, which differentiates the thesis from the previously written literature on this topic. Using measures such as employment, low-wage employment, unemployment and wages I find mostly distortionary effects. The method used in this thesis is primarily fixed effects panel data regression, but difference-in-differences analysis is conducted in the robustness section. Although the results seem relatively conclusive, it would be advised to further analyse the impact in a later time, when the reform has aged some more.