We study how firms adjust the bundles of management practices they adopt over time, using repeated survey data collected in Germany from 2012 to 2018. By employing unsupervised machine learning, we leverage high-dimensional data on human resource policies to describe clusters of management practices (management styles).
Our results suggest that two management styles exist, one of which employs many and highly structured practices, while the other lacks these practices but retains training measures. We document sizeable differences in styles across German firms, which can (only) partially be explained by firm characteristics. Further, we show that management is highly persistent over time, in part because newly adopted practices are discontinued after a short time.
We suggest miscalculations of cots-benefit trade-offs and non-fitting corporate culture as potential hindrances of adopting structured management. In light of previous findings that structured management increases firm performance, our findings have important policy implications since they show that firms which are managed in an unstructured way fail to catch up and will continue to underperform.
The Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) invites you to the next ELMI (Network of European Labour Market Research Institutes) Policy Round Table on 'Labour market informed study choice'. Malte Sandner (IAB) has an active part - see programme.
Using an experiment to understand division of labour choices in couples: Why do only few couples choose the female spouse as main provider of labour income? To understand gender imbalances among family breadwinners, I present a collective household production model with identity concerns that illuminates different channels through which gender norms can affect household specialisation decisions. To test the predictions of the model regarding identity, I develop a novel experimental paradigm to study the specialisation choices of real heterosexual couples in the lab. Women are less likely to become breadwinners than men are, but this is mainly due to gender differences in productivity. While I find little evidence that concerns for gender identity affect specialisation choices, the results suggest they amplify gender differences in labour supply at the intensive margin. The design further allows me to shed light on two additional factors that contribute to the gender imbalance among breadwinners: men’s overconfidence and women’s reluctance to assume sole responsibility for household income.
The HELM conference, jointly organized by the IAB and the DZWH (German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies), combines contributions with a general perspective on ‘Higher Education and the Labour Market’, for example, on returns to tertiary education, dropout, or graduate placement in the labour market, with contributions on alternating focus topics.
This year’s focus topic “The Bologna Process After 25 Years: Continuities, Changes, and Evaluations” commemorates the signing of the Bologna Declaration on June 19, 1999, which initiated one of the most far-reaching reform processes in European Higher Education. The reform was accompanied by e.g. improvements in comparability and mutual recognition of degrees and study credits, easier mobility of students, and the harmonisation of study structures, which for many countries implied the introduction of a two-cycle system (BA/MA). We, therefore, welcome contributions that bring together experiences and research results on different aspects of the Bologna reform process. We are particularly interested in:
- Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees on the Labour Market: With the introduction of these two degree types that were new in many European countries, an important question is how BA and MA compare on the labour market, e.g., regarding labour market entry, wages, unemployment risk, or career prospects.
- Continuing and New Inequalities: In many countries, changing from a single-cycle to a two-cycle qualification structure brought new or additional social selection. We welcome contributions that evaluate such (potential) selection at the micro-level, either within or across countries.
- Student Mobility (Before and) After Bologna: As the Bologna reform included numerous elements that facilitated international mobility of students, we are interested in contributions examining effects of the reform on overall student mobility and (changes in) effects of mobility on educational or labour market outcomes.
- Differential Impact of the Reform in International Comparison: Given that the elements introduced by the reform, in particular, the two-cycle qualification structure, entailed a different extent of changes to European countries, we welcome papers that provide a comparison of such differential impact of the reform or that analyse the specificities of individual countries.
- Attainment of Goals of the Reform: For some countries, additional goals were linked to the Bologna reform. In Germany, for example, the reform was expected to increase employability and to substantially reduce the study duration of students. Moreover, it was assumed that after the reform, most students would enter the labour market directly after obtaining their BA. We welcome contributions that evaluate such additional goals at the national or European level.
We evaluate a guaranteed job program launched in 2020 in Austria. Our evaluation is based on three approaches, pairwise matched randomization, a pre-registered synthetic control at the municipality level, and a comparison to individuals in control municipalities. This allows us to estimate direct effects, anticipation effects, and spillover effects.
We find positive impacts of program participation on economic and non-economic well-being, but not on physical health or preferences. At the municipality level, we find a large reduction of long-term unemployment, and no negative employment spillovers. There are positive anticipation effects on subjective well-being, status, and social inclusion for future participants.
Joint Work with Maximilian Kasy
Paper: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/cd25u/
The New Yorker Reportage: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/what-happens-when-jobs-are-guaranteed
Using French administrative data we estimate the wage gap distribution between in-house and temporary agency workers working in the same establishment and the same occupation. The average wage gap is about 3%, but the gap is negative in more than 25% of establishment × occupation cells. We develop and estimate a search and matching model which shows that the wage gap depends on the cost of job vacancies, on labor market frictions and on the labor management costs of temporary agencies for temp workers and user firms for in-house workers. Only a portion of the wage gap is efficient. A simple formula allows for estimating the taxes and subsidies that eliminate its inefficient component.
The workshop took place from January 18th to 19th 2024. Read the complete event report for the PhD Workshop 2024.
The IAB’s Graduate School (GradAB) and the FAU invites young researchers to its 15th interdisciplinary Ph.D. workshop “Perspectives on (Un-)Employment”. The workshop provides an opportunity for graduate students to present their ongoing work in the field of theoretical and empirical labor market research and receive feedback from leading scholars in the discipline. We seek papers that cover any one of the following topics:
- Labor supply, labor demand and unemployment
- Evaluation of labor market institutions and policies
- Education, qualification and job tasks
- Inequality, poverty and discrimination
- Gender and family
- Migration and international labor markets
- Health and job satisfaction
- Technological change and digitization
- The impact of climate change on the labor market
- Applications of machine learning and big data in labor market research
- Survey methodology (in labor market research)
- Data quality (in labor market research)
- Innovative data collection methods
On the labour markets, the last decades were characterised by structural supply-side reforms in many countries. Following its hawkish reforms from the 2000s, recently, Germany made a dovish turnaround. Conditions in basic income support for unemployed became more generous. Before, a sanctions moratorium was applied. We analyse the consequences for job findings. Building on large administrative data, we use a labour market matching and a control group approach. The moratorium dampened job findings by more than seven percent and the subsequent benefit reform by more than six percent – about half of the positive effect of the 2000s reform.
We theoretically and empirically examine how firms’ choices of wage-setting protocols respond to labor market conditions. We develop a simple model in which workers may be able to send multiple job applications and firms choose between posting wages and Nash bargaining. Posting a wage allows the firm to commit to lower wages than would be negotiated ex post, but eliminates the ability to respond to a competing offer, should the worker have one. We show that higher productivity lowers both the application-vacancy ratio and the fraction of firms posting a wage. On the other hand, an increase in the number of applications per worker raises the application-vacancy ratio while lowering the fraction of firms posting a wage. As a result, the equilibrium fraction of firms posting a wage may be positively or negatively correlated with the application-vacancy ratio, depending on the source of shocks. The model also implies that an increase in the number of applications per worker may lead to a decrease in the number of posting firms rather than a change in the wages posted by those firms. Empirically, we demonstrate that the model’s predictions are confirmed in a novel dataset from an online job board.
What factors influence refugees’ perceptions of justice in bureaucratic institutions? As global migration movements draw increasing attention, migrants’ experiences as constituents in destination countries merit further research. Drawing evidence from the 2018 survey of refugees participating in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this article examines the role of legal status in shaping perceptions of justice at government offices. Our findings highlight a stark contrast: refugees with unstable legal statuses often perceive bureaucratic proceedings as less just compared to those with firmer legal standings. However, refugees’perceptions of their encounters with street-level bureaucrats can act as a buffer against the negative effects of legal status on perceptions of justice at government offices. These insights underscore a pressing policy implication: asylum procedures, currently marked by ambiguity and delays, could benefit significantly from enhanced communication quality on the part of street-level bureaucrats.
The presentation is based on a paper in coauthorship with Anton Nivorozhkin.
