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Archives: IAB-Veranstaltungen

This study, investigates firm side responses to generous parental leave mandates.

In this study, we investigate firm side responses to generous parental leave mandates. Our primary focus is on firms’ adjustments in the gender and age composition of their workforce. To identify these effects, we use employer-employee matched data from Norway, and deploy a Bartik-type instrument exploiting variation in exposure and shifts across firms due to a series of expansionary reforms of the duration of paid parental leave. We find that in response to longer parental leave related absence, firms increase demand for young female employees but at lower wages. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that this is particularly the case in the private sector. We also document some positive effects on firm performance measured by investment and productivity. Increased part-time work by young women, and overtime hours by older workers emerge as important mechanisms explaining our results.

Our findings suggest that both small and large firms have successfully adapted to young women’s work interruptions linked to longer parental leave, an issue that has so far been overlooked in labor markets.

The recent surge in inflation led many unions and firms to alter their bargaining and wage-setting policies.

The recent surge in inflation led many unions and firms to alter their bargaining and wage-setting policies. Using novel German firm-level survey data, we document the extent of state dependency of wage-setting behavior across firms and workers given high vs. low inflation environments. The granularity of our micro-level data also allows us to study heterogeneous patterns across sectors, firms, and workers. Embedding the empirical findings in a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous firms, we then analyze the implications of state-dependent wage-setting behavior for the transmission and propagation of shocks. Lastly, we discuss the interaction of state-dependent wage setting with firms' monopsony power and how these features impact monetary policy and the slope of the Phillips curve.

We build a large new Keynesian OLG model with a realistic age structure, labor market frictions, sticky prices, and aggregate shocks.

We study the link between the evolving age structure of the working population and unemployment. We build a large new Keynesian OLG model with a realistic age structure, labor market frictions, sticky prices, and aggregate shocks. Once calibrated to the European economy, we quantify the considerable extent to which demographic changes over the last 30 years contribute to the decline of unemployment rate. Our findings have important policy implications given the expected aging of the working population in Europe. Furthermore, lowering inflation volatility is less costly in terms of higher unemployment volatility. It suggests that optimal monetary policy is more hawkish in the older society. Our results hint also at a partial reversal of the European-US unemployment puzzle due to the fact that in the US the share of young workers is expected to remain robust.

Linked employer-employee data offer a wide range of possibilities for researchers.

Linked employer-employee data offer a wide range of possibilities for researchers. For example, this type of data is used to understand the role of worker and firm quality in the development of wage inequality, as for example in Card, Heining, Kline (2013). A widely used approach to identify worker and firm quality was developed by Abowd, Kramarz and Margolis (1999) who decomposed earnings in a worker-specific component, a firm-specific component and an error term in a two-way fixed effects model. Since then, many researchers have used the AKM model to study worker and firm heterogeneity in wages, as well as the importance of labour market sorting. While the model continues to be heavily used until today, recent developments discuss potential biases and propose corrections (for example Abowd et al, 2004; Andrews et al, 2008, 2012; Kline, Saggio, Sølvsten 2020; Bonhomme et al, 2023). The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers working with these models to present and discuss current work. Possible topics for the workshop are:

  • How important are worker and firm heterogeneity for the variation of wages?
  • How do wage premia differ for worker subgroups?
  • How persistent are wage premia?
  • How important is worker-firm sorting?
  • Is there assortative matching in the labour market?
  • Are there persistent penalties to working in low-quality firms?

In this conference, which will be part of a two-day celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Research Data Centre of the BA at the IAB (IAB-FDZ).

Rising costs of living and the lack of affordable housing have brought social inequalities back to the centre of political debates in many countries. Large, high quality survey and register data provide social scientists with a solid foundation to explore topics in inequality research and to gain unique and valuable insights fostering both scholarly and public discussion.

In this conference, which will be part of a two-day celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Research Data Centre of the BA at the IAB (IAB-FDZ), we bring together scholars from various disciplines to discuss their work based on IAB-FDZ data products or similar research data made available by other national or international data providers.

We invite empirical contributions on all topics addressing social inequalities connected to labour markets, demographic change, as well as occupational or educational choice. This might include (but is not limited to) effects of labour market interventions, technological change (greening economy, digitalisation, AI), voluntary and forced migration, social stratification, working and living conditions and gender topics.

Furthermore, the Journal for Labour Market Research (JLMR) plans a Special Issue celebrating 20 years of IAB-FDZ with Till von Wachter (UCLA) as guest editor. The Journal for Labour Market Research is an interdisciplinary, peer reviewed, open access journal in the field of labour market research and publishes papers in English language concerning the labour market, employment, education/training and careers (https://labourmarketresearch.springeropen.com/). All presenters are invited to submit their manuscripts emerging from the presented research to this Special Issue by December 1st, 2024. Acceptance is contingent on successful peer review.

Skills for the Future: Navigating the Digital, Green and Social Transitions in European Labour Markets is to bring together leading national and international scholars in the social sciences to address the challenges of the digital, green and social transitions for the labour market, society and education.

Organised by the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and co-funded by Luxembourg’s National Research Fund (FNR), the objective of the international scientific conference Skills for the Future: Navigating the Digital, Green and Social Transitions in European Labour Markets is to bring together leading national and international scholars in the social sciences to address the challenges of the digital, green and social transitions for the labour market, society and education.

The conference marks the first international conference of the ELMI Network (Network of European Labour Market Research Institutes) initiated in October 2022 by the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). The network is currently composed of 11 research institutes from all over Europe to facilitate the international exchange of best practices, ideas and people. It promotes multi-disciplinary research collaborations, especially at the EU level, and the exchange of best practices in data management, data access and discussions with policy-makers and stakeholders.

Big Data and the analysis thereof is considered of increasing importance, not only for big (tech) companies.

Big Data (BD) and the analysis thereof (i.e., Big Data Analytics, BDA) is considered of increasing importance, not only for big (tech) companies but also for small/medium-sized companies and, in particular, for new ventures. Despite or precisely due to its generally presumed relevance, the question arises whether applying BDA leads to better firm performance. Based on a large, representative sample of 3,700 German start-ups, we specifically study the adoption of BDA among start-ups and analyze its economic effects using various short- and longer-term performance measures. We show that start-ups adopting BDA significantly differ from non-adopters regarding their founders' age, education, team composition, and experience. Accounting for these differences, we then investigate the effect of adopting BDA on the new ventures' operating costs, sales, profits, survival rate, and (employee) growth. Our findings show that using BDA does not lead to a competitive advantage in terms of the classical short-term performance measures but is rather associated with greater sales/profit uncertainty, higher (personnel) costs, and a higher probability of failure. Yet, the increased risk of adopting BDA is at the same time compensated by a prospect for higher excess performance -- BDA-adopting start-ups perform significantly better than their peers at the 90%-quantile -- as well as by better expected longer-term performance, as measured by the start-ups' growth and by their ability to secure Venture Capital (VC). Our findings support the concept of a few Schumpeterian Entrepreneurs who adopt technology at the frontier of innovation and found high-risk start-ups with the prospect of high rewards.

A proposal for an occupation-specific end-of-life and late-life perspective on retirees.

Retirement marks a significant life transition, signaling the end of one's active work engagement and the beginning of a new phase of life. In the best-case scenario post-retirement life is characterized by increased time spend with friends and family, and a purpose in life that is perceived as meaningful. The reduced work load should be associated with improved health, because sources of physical and psychological stress should have far less impact. However, reality paints a different picture: The research on retirement shows a lot variation in retirement experiences, financial well-being, mental and physical health, social engagement, and overall life satisfaction.
The importance of pre-retirement occupations on individuals' lives cannot be overstated. However, the impact of occupations on people’s lives does not end with their retirement. Hence, I will propose a new perspective on employment and occupations by focusing on the retirees’ late life and end of life. In my presentation I will provide the theoretical foundations, why occupations (should) have a lasting impact. I will present a data source with which such analyses could be done and discuss outcome variables of interest. Examples for occupation-specific outcomes of interest are: years of life remaining after retirement, years in good health after retirement, years spend in loneliness, wealth, poverty, depression, political attitudes, decrease in cognitive capabilities, social networks, free-time activities, volunteering, housing, life satisfaction, etc.
From a policy perspective, understanding how different occupations influence post-retirement lives can inform retirement planning initiatives and social safety nets as well as occupation-specific training and safety regulations. On an individual level, insights gained from such research can assist individuals in making informed decisions about their vocational aspirations, careers, planned changes of occupations, retirement age, and financial preparations.

The literature on alternative methods for accounting for sample-independent variability is reviewed, a typology of sources of sample-independent variation is developed, and an empirical investigation is conducted estimating the relative and absolute importance of the different types of sample-independent variation.

Empirical economics papers report standard errors to take into account uncertainty associated with sampling variation but rarely consider non-sampling variation from researcher choices about measurement of key variables, functional form choice, identification strategy, and data set. In this paper, we review the literature on alternative methods for taking account of non-sampling variability, develop a typology of sources of non-sampling variation, and conduct an empirical exercise in which we estimate the relative and absolute importance of different types of non-sampling variation. The empirical exercise proceeds in the context of the literature that seeks to estimate the causal effect of college quality on educational and labor market outcomes.

This paper analyzes the open-economy spillover effects of labor market reforms under incomplete insurance. Using microeconomic data, we document a boost in the tradable sector in the aftermath of the German Hartz IV reform. In our model, this phenomenon can be explained by an increase in household savings due to higher precautionary savings in response to the reduction in the generosity of unemployment insurance (Hartz IV). Besides reducing unemployment in the reforming country, lower unemployment benefits generate long-run negative consumption spillovers in a monetary union, which we call the dark shadow of labor market reforms. Our model can match various German trends post Hartz IV reform, such as: i) a lasting increase in net foreign asset position, ii) short-term expansion of the tradable sector relative to the non-tradable sector, and iii) continued depreciation of the real exchange rate. By contrast, simulations of German wage moderation result in qualitatively different open-economy effects that are not in line with the empirical patterns for Germany.