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Archives: IAB-Veranstaltungen

This paper estimates the medium-run effect of duration of residence in reception centers of asylum seekers.

After arrival, asylum seekers are often housed in reception centers. The type, quality and duration of stay in such centers varies considerably across or within countries. In the context of the so-called “EU refugee crisis” in 2014-2016, reports emerged that some asylum seekers remained in reception centers for several years due to limited capacity of municipalities, lengthy asylum procedures and tight housing markets. It is often argued that reception centers have a detrimental effect on integration processes of asylum seekers and refugees, yet empirical, inferential evidence is still lacking. This paper estimates the medium-run effect of duration of residence in reception centers on language skills, contacts to the host population, and employment status. We use high-quality panel data on refugees living in Germany and apply inverse-probability-weighting (IPW). The results suggest that a quick transition from reception centers into private housing modestly increases refugees’ interactions with the host population and their language proficiency. We find no effects on labor market participation. Using additional analyses, we find that moving into private housing is often associated with a shift to more precarious neighborhoods, potentially hindering a stronger realization of the benefits linked to independent living in general.

This study is about the influence of family members, neighbors and coworkers on retirement behavior.

We study the influence of family members, neighbors and coworkers on retirement behavior. To estimate causal retirement spillovers between individuals, we exploit a pension reform in the Netherlands that creates exogenous variation in peers' retirement ages, and we use administrative data on the full Dutch population.

We find large spillovers in couples, primarily due to women reacting to their husband's retirement choices. Consistent with homophily in social interactions, the influence of the average sibling, neighbor and coworker is modest, but sizable spillovers emerge between similar individuals in these groups.

Additional evidence suggests both leisure complementarities and the transmission of social norms as mechanisms behind retirement spillovers. Our findings imply that pension reforms have a large social multiplier, amplifying their overall impact on retirement behavior by 40%.

The principal effects on the probability of engagement in the criminal justice system are much larger for Black than for non-Black males.

Using rich Texas administrative data, we estimate the impact of middle school principals on post-secondary schooling, employment, and criminal justice outcomes. The results highlight the importance of school leadership, though striking differences emerge in the relative importance of different skill dimensions to different outcomes. The estimates reveal large and highly significant effects of principal value-added to cognitive skills on the productive activities of schooling and work but much weaker effects of value-added to noncognitive skills on these outcomes.

In contrast, there is little or no evidence that middle school principals affect the probability a male is arrested and has a guilty disposition by raising cognitive skills but strong evidence that they affect these outcomes through their impacts on noncognitive skills, especially those related to the probability of an out-of-school suspension. In addition, the principal effects on the probability of engagement in the criminal justice system are much larger for Black than for non-Black males, corresponding to race differences in engagement with the criminal justice system.

Stressing strict privacy policies and changing the location of the survey URL have no response-enhancing effect.

Researchers collect data in most experiments not all at once but sequentially over a period of time. This allows to observe outcomes early and to adapt the treatment assignment to reduce the costs of inferior treatments. This talk discusses multi-armed-bandit-type adaptive experimental designs and algorithms for balancing exploration of treatment effects and exploitation of better treatments. By design, bandits break usual asymptotic and make inference difficult. We show how a batched bandit design allows for valid confidence intervals and compare coverage of the batched bandit estimator in Monte Carlo simulations. In a real-world application, we investigate elements of a survey invitation message targeted to businesses. We implement a full factorial experiment with five elements adaptively.

Our results indicate that personalizing the message, emphasizing the authority of the sender, and pleading for help increase survey starting rates, while stressing strict privacy policies and changing the location of the survey URL have no response-enhancing effect. As a tool for researchers, we introduce bandits in Stata, which facilitates running Monte Carlo simulations to assist the design and implementation of experiments before data are collected, interactively running own bandit experiments, and analyzing adaptively collected data. Bandits implement three popular treatment assignment algorithms: ε-first, ε-greedy, and Thompson sampling. Bandits facilitates estimation, inference, and visualization.

The results indicate an important role played by union wage spillovers in lowering wages over the 1980-2010 period.

In this paper we provide new estimates of the impact of unions on nonunion wage setting. We allow the presence of unions to affect nonunion wages both through the typically discussed channel of nonunion firms emulating union wages in order to fend off the threat of unionisation and through a bargaining channel in which nonunion workers use the presence of union jobs as part of their outside option.
We specify these channels in a search and bargaining model that includes union formation and, in our most complete model, the possibility of nonunion  firm responses to the threat of unionisation.

Our results indicate an important role played by union wage spillovers in lowering wages over the 1980-2010 period. We  find de-unionisation can account for 38% of the decline in the mean hourly wage between 1980 and 2010, with two-thirds of that effect being due to spillovers. Both the traditional threat and bargaining channels are operational, with the bargaining channel being more important.

IAB and the Network of European Labour Market Research Institutes (ELMI) organise a policy-oriented conference on `Securing Skilled Workforces in Europe´ in Brussels.

IAB and the Network of European Labour Market Research Institutes (ELMI) organise a policy-oriented conference on 'Securing Skilled Workforces in Europe' in Brussels on October 1st and 2nd, 2024. The event is open to EU policy makers and representatives of the European Commission as well as the Directorates-General.

This lecture examines the patterns and paradoxes in observed educational and labour market attainment of migrants and minorities.

The inequalities faced by immigrants and ethnic minorities are topics of substantial salience across Europe, reflected in an every-growing body of research. Despite the insights shed by this burgeoning literature there remain a number of outstanding debates and puzzles about what leads to better or worse outcomes and the underlying mechanisms.

The UK is an interesting case for illuminating some of these debates and puzzles, due to: the diversity of its immigrant and ethnic minority population, the richness of research base, and certain counter-intuitive findings that are at odds with theoretical expectations as well as evidence from other European countries. It thus has the potential to shed further light on what drives more or less unequal outcomes in different contexts.

Drawing on a range of research from across the last 20-years, in this lecture I examine the patterns and paradoxes in observed educational and labour market attainment of migrants and minorities, with reference to the role of class background, educational aspirations, neighbourhoods and social networks, cohort change and return migration, discrimination and policy to. I explore the gendered differences in such outcomes, and what that implies for our understanding of wider national ‘gender orders’. I reflect on what this body of work can tell us about the factors that shape economic outcomes in different settings, the need for greater attention to both migrant success as well as migrant disadvantage; and I assess the key outstanding questions and implications for future research.

A typical reaction in unemployment insurance (UI) is to impose requirements (backed by sanctions) on the quantity of job search. We evaluate the job seeker’s reaction.

A typical reaction to the moral hazard problem in unemployment insurance (UI) is to impose requirements (backed by sanctions) on the quantity of job search, aimed at ensuring sufficient levels of effort. However, is this the most effective policy strategy? It does neither take into account the intrinsic motivation of the job seeker nor the quality of the targeted search. An alternative policy strategy that encompasses such goals is to focus on job search autonomy.

Exploiting a policy change in a region in Switzerland which followed this aim, we evaluate the job seeker’s reaction to being granted more autonomy. Using rich procedural register data, we document the effects on quantitative effort, scope of search and ultimately on unemployment duration and earnings in the found job.

Our results show that the policy change increased the average duration of unemployment spells in the area by about 8%, while increasing average re-employment earnings by about 3%. Results are heterogenous, a main driver of the variety is the interplay of effort delivery and local labour market conditions, notably tightness. This finding highlights the relevance of search externalities. Furthermore, we provide some evidence of labour demand effects.

Joint work: Patrick Arni, Amelie Schiprowski

The effectiveness of the minimum wage on gender wage differences is examined.

With its introduction in 2015, the national minimum wage intends to benefit primarily low-wage workers in Germany. I examine the effectiveness of the minimum wage on gender wage gaps of full-time workers among the lower half of the wage distribution. Using administrative data, distinct regional differences in the extent of wage differentials and responses to the minimum wage occur. Overall, wage gaps between men and women at the 10th percentile decrease by 2.46 and 6.34 percentage points in the West and East of Germany after 2015. Applying counterfactual wage distributions, I provide new evidence that the introduction of the minimum wage decreases wage differentials by 60% to 95%. Group-specific analyses show various responses on the basis of age, educational level and occupational activity. Counterfactual aggregate Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions indicate a decrease in discriminatory remuneration structures in the West of Germany resulting from the introduced minimum wage.

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