In-person Archive - Page 3 of 10 - IAB - Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung

Perspectives on (Un-)Employment

The IAB and the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) invite doctoral students to attend the 15th interdisciplinary Ph.D. Workshop.

The workshop took place from January 18^th to 19^th 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

Identifying Worker and Firm Quality

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?

IAB Conference ‘Investigating social inequalities using survey and register data’

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 20^th 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 1^st, 2024. Acceptance is contingent on successful peer review.

Skills for the Future: Navigating the Digital, Green and Social Transitions in European Labour Markets

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.

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.

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

International Workshop on Establishment Panel Analyses

This workshop invites empirical contributions using either the IAB Establishment Panel, one of its derivatives (LPP/LIAB), or other matched employer-employee data.

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of the IAB Establishment Panel Survey, this workshop invites empirical contributions using either the IAB Establishment Panel, one of its derivatives (LPP/LIAB), or other matched employer-employee data. Research projects from all areas of labour market research are welcome, including personnel economics, sociology and economics of vocational education and training, industrial relations, or industrial economics. Papers may address research questions in any of these areas as well as methodological questions.

Recent Developments in Wage Determination, Distribution, and Job Skills

The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) is pleased to host an international workshop on recent developments in wage determination, distribution, and job skills from 14-15 June.

The traditional human capital model of wage determination fails to explain why wage disparities exist within or between firms, as firms themselves are deemed irrelevant. However, the availability of new data, such as employer-employee matched data sets, makes it possible to better explore issues of wage inequality. Consequently, models examining the sorting of workers across firms with varying productivity levels have gained importance. Our international conference aims to contribute to a better understanding of wage determination, distribution, and job skills.

Our outstanding speakers will address the significant rise in earnings inequality witnessed across numerous countries and the factors contributing to these developments. They will discuss the role of individual determinants of wage inequality, including tenure and job mobility, as well as firm characteristics and labor market institutions, and they will delve into the effects of wage losses following job displacement and the wage elasticity of recruitment.

5th Forum ‘Higher Education and the Labour Market’ (HELM)

The conference aims to bring together experiences and research results on different aspects of practice integration.

Including practical work and work-based learning in higher education curricula has become increasingly popular, both to increase graduate employability and to improve the permeability between vocational and university education.

The implementation of practical experience in higher education is country-specific and takes different forms, from internships to integrated curricula as in the “dual-study” model of German universities of cooperative education.

The conference aims to bring together experiences and research results on different aspects of practice integration from various countries. We are particularly interested in:

Stocktaking: What forms of practice integration exist in the higher education systems of different countries? What are their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages? Is practice integration increasing, and how do the developments compare between different countries?
Student characteristics: Which types of students (e.g., high-achieving; non-academic background) are attracted to practice-oriented study programmes? What are their motives for choosing them?
Effects: How does work experience and practice orientation in higher education affect students’ skills, confidence, and motivation? Compared to less practice-oriented study programmes, are there differences in final grades, study-to-work transitions, job prospects, and income?
Internationalisation: How can internationalisation be implemented with regard to practice orientation in higher education? What are the special needs of international students?
Measurement and recognition of achievements: How can student achievements in practice phases be measured and integrated into the academic system of exams and grades? What are the problems in aligning practical and academic evaluation?
Cooperation of stakeholders: How can the cooperation between universities and stakeholders, e.g. vocational schools and companies, be improved? What formal framework is required?

Moreover, the conference offers sessions with a more general perspective on “Higher Education and the Labour Market”, for example on returns to tertiary education, university dropout, graduates’ placement on the labour market, and regional mobility of graduates.

Estimating returns to special education: combining machine learning and text analysis to address confounding

Results from the first ever study to examine short- and long-term returns to special education programs with causal machine learning and computational text analysis methods.

Leveraging unique insights into the special education placement process through written individual psychological records, I present results from the first ever study to examine short- and long-term returns to special education programs with causal machine learning and computational text analysis methods. I find that special education programs in inclusive settings have positive returns in terms of academic performance as well as labor-market integration. Moreover, I uncover a positive effect of inclusive special education programs in comparison to segregated programs. This effect is heterogenous: segregation has least negative effects for students with emotional or behavioral problems, and for nonnative students with special needs. Finally, I deliver optimal program placement rules that would maximize aggregated school performance and labor market integration for students with special needs at lower program costs. These placement rules would reallocate most students with special needs from segregation to inclusion.