Average Wage, Qualification of the Workforce andExport Performance in German Enterprises:Evidence from KombiFiD Data

Empirical investigations with enterprise level data from official statistics often use the averagewage as a proxy variable for the qualification of the workforce, mostly due to the lack ofdetailed information on the qualification of the employees. This paper uses unique newlyavailable data for German enterprises from the KombiFiD project that for the first timecombine information from the statistics of employees covered by social security andinformation from surveys performed by the Statistical Offices to look at the quality of thisproxy variable by investigating the link between the average wage in a firm and thequalification of the workforce. Furthermore, it demonstrates that detailed information on thequalification of the workforce sheds new light on the role of highly qualified employees forsuccess on export markets that is not revealed by the average wage as a proxy variable.Based on the results of this paper it is argued that combined firm level data that stem fromdifferent data producers should be widely accessible for research....