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Archives: IAB-Veranstaltungen

The vocational education system in Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) is mainly school-based, with schools directly linked to large industrial conglomerates in communist times. Since the transition to a market economy it has been an uphill battle to connect vocational schools and newly emerging firms for workplace-based training. In particular, the region’s many small firms struggle to offer high-quality training, given the required investments and manpower. Yet, partly inspired by investors from German-speaking countries with their strong tradition of dual vocational education workplace-based training innovations have been evolving in increasing numbers in the region. What are the success stories so far and what are hurdles for rolling out dual educational training more systematically? What can players from different countries learn from each other?

Civil society has played an important role in meeting the challenges of refugee migration in recent years. This policy report studies the importance of civic engagement for the integration of refugees by employing several waves of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP survey data. Using the density of newly established associations at the county level as a measure of civic engagement of a region, we exploit regional differences in civic engagement in order to estimate its association with individual integration outcomes of refugees. We find that in regions with particularly high levels of civic engagement, refugees have significantly more frequent contact to Germans, higher life satisfaction and better German language skills. This correlation is robust to controlling for the local population structure, economic strength and labor market situation. In terms of language acquisition, women and refugees with a low level of education benefit the most from high civic engagement. Moreover, refugees with university degrees find significantly better-paying jobs in areas with higher civic engagement. However, no direct correlation could be established between civic engagement and the likelihood that refugees are active in the labor market. Nonetheless, the results suggest that support from civil society translates into improved access to government benefits. Our findings stress that local civic engagement is an important complement to public assistance services and policy makers should give a high priority to team up with civil society to improve refugees' integration outcomes.

The joined Graduate School (GradAB) of the IAB and the FAU invites young researchers who study topics in labor economics and sociology to its 13th interdisciplinary PhD workshop “Perspectives on (Un-) Employment”. The event provides an opportunity for graduate students to present their ongoing research and receive feedback from senior scholars who work at the forefront of labor market research. We seek theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of labor market research. Your paper may cover topics such as:

  • Unemployment, labor supply and labor demand
  • Inequality, poverty and discrimination
  • Evaluation of labor market institutions and policies
  • Wages and productivity
  • Occupations
  • Education, qualification and job tasks
  • Gender and family
  • Migration and international labor markets
  • Technological change and digitization
  • The impact of climate change/COVID-19 on the labor market
  • Methodology of labor market research

Natural disasters are growing in frequency globally. Understanding how vulnerable populations respond to these disasters is essential for an effective policy response. This paper explores the short- and long-run consequences of the 1906 San Francisco Fire, one of the largest urban fires in American history. Using linked Census records, I follow residents of San Francisco and their children from 1900 to 1940. Historical records suggest that exogenous factors such as wind and the availability of water determined where the fire stopped. I implement a spatial regression discontinuity design across the boundary of the razed area to identify the effect of the fire on those who lost their home to it. I find that in the short run, the fire displaced affected residents, forced them into lower-paying occupations and out of entrepreneurship. Experiencing the disaster disrupted children’s school attendance and led to an average loss of six months of education. While most effects attenuated over time, the negative effect on business ownership persists even in 1940, 34 years after the fire. Therefore, my findings reject the hope for a “reversal of fortune” for the victims, in contrast to what is found for more recent natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina.

This paper presents estimates of the causal effect of the default marital property regime on female labour supply, fertility, marriage, and marital dissolution rates utilising the regional variation in the default marital property system in Spain and the 2005 divorce reform. Property rights theory predicts that under contractual incompleteness ownership of physical assets affects investments, and that joint ownership provides the strongest incentives to make relationship-specific investments, while non-integration encourages non-specific investments. My findings are consistent with these predictions: separation of property promotes higher female labour supply, having no more than two children, and a lower marriage rate than community property. The divorce rate remains largely unaffected by the property regime type.

This paper examines how and why returning to education to attain a high school diploma combats earnings penalties due to negative employment shocks. High school dropout continues to be a problem, particularly as employment is increasingly skilled over time. Following a policy expanding a Norwegian vocational certification scheme, displaced workers certify their skills at significantly higher rates relative to those displaced pre-expansion. Increases in certification post-expansion significantly reduce income losses after job loss. Certifying skills fosters recovery among early career displaced workers through the retention of relevant industry-specific human capital, which increases job stability over 20 years later.

Student dropout from higher education constitutes a serious challenge: In recent years, almost 30 percent of students enrolled in bachelor’s degree programmes in Germany have left university without a degree. Moreover, dropout entails substantial costs. These include the costs of students’ (unsuccessful) stay in the higher education system as well as indirect costs due to the loss of tax and contribution payments these students would have made had they entered the labour market immediately after school. On an individual level, dropout entails a lower lifetime income as well as psychological costs, as dropouts have to cope with their academic “failure” and also need to realign the plans for their professional future. Therefore, understanding – and potentially avoiding – student dropout is a topic of high relevance, not only for researchers but also for policy makers and students themselves.

The conference aims to provide insights and different perspectives on the link between higher education and the labour market. It offers sessions with general contributions on the topic – as, for example, on returns to tertiary education, graduates’ placement on the labour market, or regional mobility of graduates – as well as sessions on this year’s focus topic, dropout from higher education.

In this framework, we are particularly interested in contributions on topics such as:

  • (Labour-market) perspectives of university dropouts.
  • Selectivity of dropout with respect to students’ social background.
  • Reasons for student dropout, with papers on the current Covid-19 pandemic’s impacts on dropout being particularly welcome.
  • Returns to alternative educational tracks (e.g., vocational education) vs. immediate entry into the labour market after dropout.
  • Potential measures to reduce dropout rates.

We study the long-run effects of soft commitments and reminders on academic performance. In a randomized field experiment, our first treatment consisted of sending students in a 7-semester bachelor's degree program reminders about the recommended study structure each semester. The second treatment group received the same reminders but in the first semester were on top offered the opportunity to commit to the recommended study structure with a non-binding agreement. After 5 years, we find that the reminders did not generate any effects on academic performance. The soft commitment device treatment on the other hand is highly effective: after 5 years, students in the commitment treatment are 14 percentage points more likely to have graduated, 9 percentage points less likely to have dropped out, and their time to graduation is 0.35 semesters shorter than that of the controls – while maintaining the same GPA as the controls.