IAB-Veranstaltungen Archiv - Page 6 of 32 - IAB - Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

This study is about prevalence, perceived costs and consequences of sexual harassment (SH) in German workplaces.

We study the prevalence, perceived costs and consequences of sexual harassment (SH) in German workplaces. We first use a discrete choice experiment to estimate workers' willingness to pay (WTP) for workplaces without a history of known SH cases and preventive firm measures. Women, particularly early in their careers, display the highest WTP. Preventive measures significantly increase the attractiveness of workplaces, even when there is a history of SH.

Motivated by these results, we then document SH experiences using new data from the Linked Personnel Panel (LPP) and the IAB-OPAL online panel. SH is widespread: 20 percent of employees have either experienced SH at work personally or in their close work environment. Women are affected significantly more often than men. Women are also less likely to trust that leadership will respond appropriately to reported cases, and this lack of trust correlates with higher experienced incidence rates. Firms with active complaint procedures and preventive measures report greater employee awareness and more open discussion of SH. Taken together, our findings provide a strong economic rationale for preventive policies.

Why do workers dislike inflation? Wage Erosion and Conflict Costs

This study shows how costly is inflation to workers.

How costly is inflation to workers? Answers to this question have focused on the path of real wages during inflationary periods. We argue that workers must take costly actions (“conflict”) to have nominal wages catch up with inflation, meaning there are welfare costs even if real wages do not fall as inflation rises. We study a menu-cost style model, where workers choose whether to engage in conflict with employers to secure a wage increase. We show that, following a rise in inflation, wage catch-up resulting from more frequent conflict does not raise welfare. Instead, the impact of inflation on worker welfare is determined by what we call “wage erosion”—how inflation would lower real wages if workers’ conflict decisions did not respond to inflation.

As a result, using observed wage growth to measure worker welfare understates the costs of inflation. We conduct a survey showing that workers are willing to sacrifice 1.75% of their wages to avoid conflict. Calibrating the model to survey data, incorporating conflict significantly raises the costs of inflation for workers.

Find here draft of the working paper.

Skill allocation and urban amenities in the developing world

This study shows us that the city-size wage premium is larger for low-skilled than for high-skilled workers in Peru.

We use individual geocoded data from Peru and document that the city-size wage premium is larger for low-skilled than for high-skilled workers, in contrast with most developed countries. We interpret this evidence using a model of location choice with private amenity goods and non-homothetic preferences.

Skilled workers enjoy higher incomes and devote a higher expenditure share to amenity goods, such as private schools or upper-class neighborhoods. The supply of these amenities is subject to a fixed cost, and only sufficiently large cities have enough demand to offer them. Thus, skilled workers demand a higher wage premium to live in small cities, and the returns to working in a large city are smaller for them than for their unskilled counterparts. Our quantitative exercises indicate that the mechanism accounts for two-thirds of the gap in the city-size wage premium between high-skilled and low-skilled workers.

joint with Andrii Parkhomenko and Daniel Velásquez-Cabrera

Labor Markets, Inequality, and Hiring Selection

This study rationalizes intuition and evidence altogether using a nonsequential search model.

Employers hire more selectively between heterogeneous productivity workers when applicants' queues are longer. Consistently, CPS data reveal a positive and concave relation between unemployment rates and wage inequality.

We rationalize intuition and evidence altogether using a nonsequential search model in which selective hiring stretches out the right tail of the wage distribution and compresses the left one. Using GMM-estimated parameters, we show that mean worker productivity distribution shifts are consistent with the evidence.

Welfare analysis suggests that regressive taxation may enhance efficiency because expected good matches stimulate vacancies, creating a positive externality for other job seekers.

(joint work with Alessandra Pizzo)

Identifying Worker and Firm Quality (2nd Edition)

This worksphop is about using Linked employer-employee data to study worker and firm heterogeneity in wages as well as the importance of labour market sorting.

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).

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). As with the first edition of the workshop that took place in 2023, the purpose of the second edition continues to be to bring together researchers working on or interested in topics related to worker and firm quality to discuss current work.

The Increase in Refugees to Germany and Social Consequences

This study is about the Increase in Refugees to Germany by Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and local district-level administrative data.

In 2015–16, Germany experienced a rapid and controversial increase in refugees that varied substantially across German districts. This increase provides unique leverage for analyzing how fractionalization, threat, and contact shape the consequences of immigration and ethnolinguistic heterogeneity.

Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and local district-level administrative data on refugee shares, we innovatively focus on within-person/within-district change in six exclusionary beliefs and behaviors. We demonstrate a two-level cross-cutting process that integrates threat and contact theory but contradicts fractionalization theory.

As the refugee share increased nationally, concerns about immigration and Far Right party support increased. However, district-level refugee shares significantly reduced concerns about immigration and Far Right party support. Also, rising district-level refugee shares are not associated with concerns about social cohesion, trust, residential moves, and subjective fair tax rates. While districts with fewer refugees drove the national-level threat, rising district-level refugee shares reduced or did not heighten exclusionary beliefs and behaviors.

International Trade Responses to Labor Market Regulations

This paper demonstrates that labor market regulations shape trade competition in labor-intensive activities.

This paper demonstrates that labor market regulations, such as minimum wages or payroll taxes, shape trade competition in labor-intensive activities. I exploit data from a large European trade program where firms from different countries supply labor services at the same location but face different payroll taxes and minimum wage rules. Country case-studies and model-consistent gravity estimates show large trade responses to tax and regulatory reforms, with an elasticity of trade in services to labor costs larger than one. The results imply that absent regulatory and fiscal harmonization, export competitiveness depends, in part, on domestic labor market policies.

2nd Workshop on Urban Labor Markets and Local Income Inequality

The workshop brings together junior and senior researchers working on issues about Urban Labor Markets and Local Income Inequality.

Urban labor markets provide agglomeration advantages to workers and firms. However, the distributional consequences are not fully understood. Agglomeration benefits are unevenly shared among low- and high-skilled workers. At the same time, many large urban labor markets around the world have experienced strongly rising housing costs in recent decades, especially for renters and young first-time homebuyers, putting these groups at risk of being priced out of the local labor market. The workshop aims to bring together junior and senior researchers working on these and related issues and welcomes both empirical and theoretical contributions. The list of topic includes, but is not limited to

Distributional consequences of agglomeration benefits
Labor market outcomes and housing affordability
Highly-local income inequality
Spatial extent of local labor markets and commuting patterns
Neighborhood effects and segregation
Interactions between local housing and labor markets

Jobs, Skills, and Productivity in Structural Transformations

This conference marks the third international conference of the ELMI Network (Network of European Labour Market Research Institutes).

Organised by the Institute for Structural Research (IBS), Institute for Employment Research (IAB), and Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), the international scientific conference Jobs, Skills, and Productivity in Structural Transformations aims to bring together leading scholars in the social sciences to address the challenges of the employability, skill mismatches and skill upgrading, social cohesion, and public policy responses to industrial and structural transitions.

The conference marks the third international conference of the ELMI Network (Network of European Labour Market Research Institutes), composed of 11 research institutes to facilitate the international exchange of best practices, ideas and people (www.elmi-network.eu). It promotes multi-disciplinary European research collaborations, and the exchange of best practices in data management, data access, and discussions with policy-makers and stakeholders.

We are particularly interested in papers that address the following issues:

Labour market consequences and long-term career trajectories of workers affected by deindustralisation and large structural shifts
The impact of green and digital transitions on skill demand and skill mismatches
Labour market consequences of military rearmament
Regional disparities in labour market adaptation to structural change
The role of education systems in preparing workers for structural transitions
The effectiveness of active labour market policies (ALMPs) in addressing structural transformations