Following the successes of the 2020 Conference, we are organizing the second conference focused on Digital Transformation and the Future of Work
Veranstaltungsreihe: Workshops und Konferenzen (en)
Das IAB organisiert eigenständig oder in Zusammenarbeit mit externen Partnern nationale und internationale Konferenzen und Workshops zu aktuellen Fragestellungen in der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung. Die Tagungen richten sich vorwiegend an Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler, je nach Veranstaltung aber auch an Interessierte aus Politik und Praxis.
2nd International Workshop on Machine Learning in Labor, Education, and Health Economics
„Higher Education and the Labour Market“ (HELM): Dropping out of Higher Education: Reasons, Selectivity, and Labour Market Outcomes
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.
Workshop “Vacancies, Hiring and Matching”
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) is pleased to invite submissions for a workshop on “Vacancies, Hiring and Matching” in Nuremberg on October 1 and 2, 2019. In 2019, the IAB celebrates the 30th anniversary of the German Job Vacancy Survey, which has been collecting representative data
on vacancies and hiring processes since 1989. Given that the nature of employers’ vacancy posting
and hiring processes is an important, but still under-researched topic, the workshop’s objective is to
discuss recent developments in the following research areas:
- Empirical research based on employer-level and/or vacancy data (also online vacancy data)
- Macroeconomic work dealing with vacancies, labor market flows or the matching process
- Other empirical studies on labor demand and the hiring of workers
- Methodological work discussing employer-level data collection and/or the measurement of vacancies and labor flows
„Higher Education and the Labour Market“ (HELM)
Different Paths – Different Outcomes? Changes in the Acquisition of the Higher Education Entrance Qualification and Educational Pathways of Graduates
Today, the majority of the 18-19 year olds acquires a higher education entrance qualification. While most of them do so by obtaining a general secondary school certificate (e.g., Abitur, Matura, Baccalauréat, A-Levels), alternative paths to acquiring a higher education entrance qualification might apply. Moreover, cooperative education programmes integrating vocational and tertiary education (“Duales Studium”), which provide an alternative path to university studies and vocational training, have become increasingly popular.
How these changes shape education and career paths of students/degree holders is the focus topic of this year’s 2nd Forum „Higher Education and the Labour Market“. Of particular interest are papers focusing on the education and career paths of the new (non-traditional) student groups or analysing (and ideally comparing) students following the different educational tracks (university studies, vocational training, cooperative education programmes). Contributions might, for example, cover topics like:
- Who chooses (traditional) higher education programmes, who chooses vocational education, and who opts for cooperative education programmes? Are there systematic differences in students’ choices between these options, for example due to gender, academic or migration background, the type of entrance qualification, and/or individual competences?
- What determines the choice of subjects in higher education or vocational training?
- Does the type of higher education entrance qualification influence the success in vocational and higher education?
- Are training and/or study decisions revised later on? And if so, when will this be the case, who will be most likely to revise her or his decision, are some decisions more likely to be revised than others, and which alternative paths are taken?
- It is often argued that vocational and tertiary education convey different types of competencies (more specific vs. more general). How do these differences in competence endowments affect degree holders’ labour market chances?
In addition to the focus topic we are also interested in contributions that deal with the link between higher education and the labour market in general. Examples are papers focusing on topics like returns to education, overeducation among holders of tertiary degrees, labour market transitions of university drop-outs, graduates’ placement on the labour market – especially with regard to graduates with different types of degrees (e.g., B.A./M.A), or differences over time resulting from the increase in take-up of university studies.
Field Experiments in Policy Evaluation
The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and the Labor and Socio-Economic Research Center (LASER) of the University of Erlangen Nuremberg are pleased to announce a workshop on field experiments in policy evaluation. Randomized experiments are the golden standard of causal analysis and have become an important tool in policy evaluations. However, conducting field experiments poses several methodical challenges like external validity, spillover effects, or dynamic selection. The two-day workshop seeks to bring together researchers focusing on policy evaluations using a field experimental design. Studies addressing one of the following fields are particularly welcome:
- Labor economics
- Economics of education
- Health economics
4th Workshop on Spatial Dimensions of the Labour Market
The 4th Workshop on “Spatial Dimensions of the Labour Market” focuses on topics concerning regional labour markets. This year, a special focus is placed on the causes and consequences of agglomeration effects, and on local labour markets. The workshop aims to bring together frontier researchers from the areas of labour economics, regional economics, geography and other related fields. Theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented contributions are welcome.
TASKS V: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work
Technological advances in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence are increasingly making it possible for machines to perform tasks that previously could only be done by humans. This development has sparked scientific and public debates on the future of work, often dealing with automation and the substitution of labor. The transformation of the working environment goes hand in hand with a reorganization of company structures, occupational and workplace-related content and skill requirements. New inequality paths are emerging and labor market participants are being confronted differently with these changes. In addition, educational and other institutional frameworks keep influencing the labor market. The aim of this conference is to bring together economists, sociologists and researchers from related fields to discuss frontier research on labor market effects of automation and digitization. Special focus is on the following questions:
- How do new technologies affect the level and structure of employment?
- How are new technologies changing work content?
- What are the (non-)monetary returns to work content?
- How do new technologies shape skill demands and which role do social skills play?
- How does technology affect overall inequality and also inequality between firms and workers?
- How does the role of educational and labor market institutions change?
- How do firms and workers adapt to changing requirements?
- How can policy help firms and workers who are struggling to adapt to digital transformation?
The scientific committee encourages theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions from all areas of labor economics, labor sociology and related fields.
Secure Access Data Center (CASD) / IAB Conference
We are very pleased to announce the first CASD / IAB Conference on the advances in social sciences using administrative and survey data. The CASD and the IAB have recently established cross-country access to confidential administrative data in France and Germany. The aim is to foster and facilitate the use of rich register datasets – which can be partly combined with detailed survey data – from both countries and to improve the data sources for comparative research in social sciences.
The conference aims to bring together researchers using confidential administrative data in France and Germany and also welcomes researchers using similar data from other countries.
23rd Conference “Theories and Methods in Macroeconomics” (T2M)
For the T2M 2019 conference, the program committee has selected special sessions organized by leading researchers in these fields:
- “Expectations in macroeconomics” by Ruediger Bachmann (University of Notre Dame)
- “Safe assets and the macroeconomy” by Kenza Benhima (Université de Lausanne)
- “IAB data and macro applications” by Britta Gehrke (IAB and FAU)
- “Vacancies and recruitment” by Leo Kaas (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
- “Real exchange rate dynamics” by Gernot Müller (Universität Tübingen)