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Archives: IAB-Veranstaltungen

We provide evidence for intensive margin adjustments in hours worked consistent with estimates.

After the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly abandoned a minimum exchange rate policy in 2015, the Swiss franc appreciated by more than 10 percent against the Euro. The appreciation implied a sudden increase in real wage incomes for over 40,000 German cross-border commuters into Switzerland. We use this exchange rate shock to estimate the own-wage and cross-spouse labor supply elasticities from administrative tax returns data and find a 5% drop in taxable income for cross-border workers and a 1.5% reduction in taxable income for cross-border worker spouses. We provide evidence for intensive margin adjustments in hours worked consistent with these estimates.

This paper develops a macroeconomic model that combines an incomplete-markets overlapping-generations economy with a job ladder featuring strategic wage bargaining and endogenous search effort of employed and non-employed workers. The model is able to capture the empirical relationships between search activity, labor market transition, earnings and wealth that we document in German data. We use the calibrated model to analyze the determinants of job mobility, earnings and wealth dynamics over the life cycle. We further examine the impact of unemployment insurance and progressive taxation for labor market dynamics, wage inequality and macroeconomic outcomes.

This workshop aims to improve the knowledge on welfare and unemployment dynamics and social security under different institutional settings. It is also about the question of how benefit recipients can be helped to leave benefit receipt permanently.

Demographic change, digitalisation and the need to achieve carbon-neutral growth not only have macro-economic consequences, but also have an impact on individual employment prospects and careers. Flexible employment might offer additional employment opportunities, but might also lead to interrupted employment careers with workers being less well protected against social risks and against old-age poverty. Technological change might decrease the labour demand particularly for medium and low-skill occupations. This might affect individual employment stability. Changing working conditions may demand new requirements on employees' qualifications and skills, leading to qualification policies reacting more flexibly to new requirements. The recent crises have also shown that certain population groups have limited access to benefits in existing social security systems. This particularly holds for those with non-standard employment (i.e. solo-self-employed, marginally employed). Conditionality and demanding elements are prevalent in most social security and minimum income systems. It is vital to understand consequences of these principles for the take-up of benefits as well as the employment prospects and social mobility of recipients.

Against this background, this workshop aims to improve the knowledge on welfare and unemployment dynamics and social security under different institutional settings. It is also about the question of how benefit recipients can be helped to leave benefit receipt permanently.

The workshop is open to empirical and policy-oriented single country studies or international comparisons from sociology, economics or political science based on quantitative empirical data. Contributions using different methods, for example sequence data analysis, duration analysis, causal analysis, and methods of policy analyses and microsimulation on one or more of the following questions are very welcome:

  • How do the mentioned structural changes (e.g. technological change) affect individual employment prospects and economic situation? What is the impact on social inequality?
  • What are typical labour market trajectories for different groups of unemployed individuals (e.g. vulnerable groups)?
  • What role does atypical employment play? Have atypical employment relationships proved successful? How can upward mobility succeed?
  • What role do education and training play? What are their long-run effects?
  • Which experiences did welfare states make with the strategies of activation and social investment?
  • Is providing a basic income instead of insurance based social security an adequate response to the trends?

We argue that skill-biased technological change not only affects wage gaps between skill groups, but also increases wage inequality within skill groups, across workers in different firms. Building on a heterogeneous firm framework with labor market frictions, we show that an industry-wide skill-biased technological change shock will increase between-firm wage inequality within the industry through four main channels: changes in the skill wage premium (as in traditional models of technological change); increased employment concentration in more productive firms; increased wage dispersion between firms for workers of the same skill type; and increased dispersion in the skill mix that firms employ, due to more sorting of skilled workers into more productive firms. Importantly, a simultaneous increase in the supply of skilled workers does not offset the technology- induced rise in inequality. Using rich administrative matched employer-employee data from Germany, we provide empirical evidence of establishment-level adjustments that are in line with the predictions of the model. We further document that industries with more technological adoption exhibit particularly pronounced adjustment patterns along the dimensions highlighted by the model. 

We study a Dutch reform that raised the retirement age by 13 months and nearly tripled employment at targeted ages.

Government policies are encouraging older workers to delay retirement, which may curb younger workers' career advancement. We study a Dutch reform that raised the retirement age by 13 months and nearly tripled employment at targeted ages. Using monthly linked employer-employee data, we show that affected firms delay and decrease replacement hiring, and coworkers' earnings fall via reductions in hours worked, wages, and promotions. The hiring and coworker spillovers offset most of the additional hours worked by older workers. These spillovers exacerbate within-firm earnings disparities, redistributing earnings from low to high earners, young to old workers, and women to men.

Racial gaps in student loan accumulation and repayment are substantial. Using data from the Beginning Postsecondary Students survey, we document that Black students are more likely to borrow than White students, and they accumulate larger student debt conditional on borrowing. Black borrowers are also more likely to be enrolled in income-based or extended repayment plans, so they have lower average monthly payments and pay off their debt more slowly. Nevertheless, Black borrowers are 2-4 times more likely to default on student loans. To what extent can initial conditions and lifecycle financial circumstances account for these racial differences in student loan repayment and default? We construct a lifecycle consumption-savings model that captures observed heterogeneity in initial wealth and student debt, as well as unobserved heterogeneity in parameters governing initial human capital and lifecycle human capital accumulation. The model produces earnings dynamics, labor supply choices, human capital accumulation, and financial asset accumulation that are consistent with lifecycle data. We use our model to quantify the relative contributions from each of these channels to the racial default rate gaps over the lifecycle. We aim to use our model to advance policy proposals that can mitigate racial gaps in student loan default.

This paper examines the incidence and consequences of individual wage bargaining.  We collected survey data on the bargaining policies of more than 700 German firms.  Using these data, we validate a new survey measure of firm bargaining policies.  We then examine what drives heterogeneity in firm policies. Using the link between these data, administrative Social Security records, and a survey we fielded to 135,000 German workers, we examine the dynamics of bargaining in the labor market.  In the last part of the paper we examine the implications of individual-bargaining for wage inequality.  We also draw a link between individual specific pay premia and bargaining behavior.

During the tour, three excellent job market candidates in Labour Economics, Pauline Carry, Elio Nimier-David and Raoul van Maarseveen will present their job market papers.

The IAB is excited to host one station of the EALE Job Market Tour 2023 on Wednesday, April 19th 2023. The EALE Job Market Tour is an annual event devised to promote research and interaction among young scholars from European institutions. The event takes place after the job market, but the candidates are selected beforehand by a committee based on their paper and participation at the EALE conference.

During the tour, three excellent job market candidates in Labour Economics, Pauline Carry (Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistique (CREST)), Elio Nimier-David (CREST) and Raoul van Maarseveen (Uppsala University) will present their job market papers. PhD students, junior and senior staff are welcome to attend.

The event also includes a keynote by Wolfgang Dauth (IAB) and a presentation of the IAB data by Dana Müller (IAB). With the event, we aim to foster exchange between the job market candidates and researchers from the IAB as well as local institutions.

The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) is pleased to host a workshop on imperfect competition in the labor market from 26-27 May. Topics that will be covered at the workshop are:

  • Models of monopsonistic and oligopsonistic competition and their empirical assessment
  • Quantifying the elasticities of labor supply, recruits and separations to the firm
  • The role of firms in wage-setting
  • Outside options and wages
  • Employment concentration and wages
  • Rent sharing
  • Policies that may remedy imperfect competition, e.g. minimum wage and collective bargaining