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The conference focuses on technology, trade, and demographic changes and the ways they interact with employment, wages, and participation in the labor market, with a particular emphasis on the role of institutions and on labor markets during the COVID-19 crisis. Understanding these relationships is key in assessing the performance of the labor market and for the design of effective labor market policies. We invite empirical and theoretical contributions on these topics from all areas of economics and sociology with a focus on labor, education, health, or human resource management.

The conference will be held in-person. It is sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Priority Program 1764 “The German Labor Market in a Globalized World” and will also mark the end of the program.

Logo LISER - Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research

With the COVID-19 pandemic in its third year, the question how the former has affected labour markets and economic policies continues to be of prime importance. Has the pandemic led to lasting changes in the organization of work? Which workers, firms or regions will benefit from such changes? Thus far, research has mainly focussed on the pandemic’s initial impact. Much less is known about its effects in the medium run and if early adjustments have turned into permanent changes. As more data is becoming available, it is now possible to assess how individual labour market biographies have been affected; how firms adapted to disruptions in their production processes; how the effects of the pandemic differed between regions, sectors or occupations; and whether certain policies have been changed permanently as a result of the crisis. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers to present and discuss current work on the labour market consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

  1. How have individual labour market biographies been affected by the pandemic?
  2. Do pandemic effects differ between groups of individuals and have there been changes in labour market inequality?
  3. Has the pandemic led to labour market scarring?
  4. How have school-to-work transitions, entries into training or transitions from training into employment been affected?
  5. How has the allocation of household or care tasks changed during the pandemic?
  6. Has occupational mobility changed as a result of the pandemic?
  7. How have firms responded to the pandemic?
  8. How has the adoption of working-from-home schemes affected firms’ production processes?
  9. Has the pandemic led to more investment in digital technologies and how has this affected the workers at the firm?
  10. Has occupation- or task-specific labour demand changed during the pandemic?
  11. How has short-term work been used during the pandemic?
  12. Have firms adjusted their (international) supply chains?
  13. Have urban labour markets become less attractive?
  14. Have regional labour market disparities increased as a result of the pandemic?

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

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.

Der diesjährige Workshop zur Arbeitsmarktpolitik des Leibniz-Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle und des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung Nürnberg widmet sich dem Thema "Strukturwandel auf dem Arbeitsmarkt".

Internationale Arbeitsteilung, Digitalisierung und technologischer Fortschritt stellen Unternehmen vor komplexe, zukunftsentscheidende Fragen, können ganze Wirtschaftszweige bedrohen und viele Arbeitsplätze kosten. So wird zum Beispiel davon ausgegangen, dass Routinearbeiten vermehrt durch Maschinen übernommen werden können und die Nachfrage nach Arbeitskräften in vielen dieser Tätigkeitsfelder langfristig stark sinken wird. Auch politische Entscheidungen und Regulierungen, beispielsweise im Bereich des Umweltschutzes, führen zu Umbrüchen in traditionsreichen Branchen wie der Braunkohleförderung oder der Automobilindustrie. Gleichzeitig ergeben sich durch strukturellen Wandel und die damit einhergehende Verschiebung der Arbeitsnachfrage neue Arbeitsfelder und Berufsbilder in aufstrebenden Wirtschaftszweigen.

Dabei entstehen unter anderem neue Erwerbsbiografien, die oft kaum noch der traditionellen Vorstellung von langfristigen Anstellungsverhältnissen und Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten innerhalb eines Betriebes entsprechen. Vielmehr sind sie geprägt von häufigeren Wechseln des Arbeitgebers und zahlreichen Perioden der Weiterbildung. Auch Personen, die ihren Arbeitsplatz durch eine Betriebsschließung verloren haben, müssen sich der Herausforderung des lebenslangen Lernens stellen, um den Anschluss auf dem Arbeitsmarkt nicht zu verlieren. Vor diesem Hintergrund diskutiert der 16. IWH/IAB-Workshop zur Arbeitsmarktpolitik die Auswirkungen strukturellen Wandels auf Regionen, Branchen, Betriebe und einzelne Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmer.

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

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.

Technological progress, especially recent changes through automation and digitalization, international trade, and demographic developments have far-reaching consequences for the way we work and study. In a one-day workshop, we want to discuss the challenges to the labor market and the educational and vocational system in a globalized and digitalized world facing demographic change and migration. The special focus lies on how these developments affect firms and workers (e. g., employment, skill demand and supply, task requirements, wages, working conditions, and workload). Moreover, we want to examine the political sphere, and draw conclusions which policies are effective to foster the benefits and limit the negative consequences for the society. We invite researchers to submit empirical and theoretical contributions on this topic from all areas of economics and social sciences.