We evaluate two policies that provide financial incentives for re-employment of job seekers at risk of long-term unemployment: (i) a re-employment voucher that incentivizes a specialized third party to match the job seeker with an employer; and (ii) a re-employment bonus that incentivizes the job seeker directly. We combine administrative records and data generated by an experimental implementation of these policies in northern Italy during 2017-2018 and involving more than 10,000 job seekers. Each policy is no less effective than conventional job search assistance. We argue that a dual voucher-bonus system based on self-selection would be cost effective.
Veranstaltungsreihe: IAB-Colloquium
Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler die Ergebnisse ihrer Forschungsarbeit vor und diskutieren diese mit Expertinnen und Experten aus dem IAB. Auch Interessierte aus Arbeitsverwaltung, Politik und Praxis sind willkommen.
Hours mismatch
We characterize work hour constraints in the labor market and quantify welfare gains to workers
from moving from their current hours to their optimal hours. There is a firm component
to work hours that explains approximately 27% of the overall variability in hours. Contrary to
predictions from established models of work hours determination, there is virtually no correlation
between worker preference for hours and employer hour requirements. Instead, high-wage
workers are more likely to sort to firms offering more hours even though they have a preference
for fewer hours. Using a revealed preference approach, we find that workers are off their labor
supply curve, on average. The typical worker has an inelastic labor supply and prefers firms
that offer more hours. Workers are willing to trade off 25% of earnings on average to move
from their current employer to an employer that offers the ideal hours, at a given wage level.
The evolution of the earnings gap within couples over time – a life-course perspective
Research on earnings inequalities in heterosexual couples has shown that women tend to earn substantially less than their male partners (e.g.Bianci et al. 1999; Estevez-Abe 2008; Dotti-Sani 2015) and also that these inequalities have been quite consistent over time and resistant to institutional change (Dieckhoff et al. 2020). These inequalities are problematic as they impact women’s future labour market outcomes. We know from existing work that women who earn less than their partner are more likely to drop out of the labour market (Shafer 2011); switch from full-time to part-time (Dieckhoff et al. 2016) and less like to advance their careers (Bröckel et al. 2015). Earnings inequalities in couples are hence not only the result of inequalities in the labour market, they can also further enhance them. It is thus important to understand these inequalities and how these evolve over the life-course. In this effort, we investigate using the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) 1992-2018 how earnings inequalities evolve with duration of couple’s cohabiting relationships based on German panel data. We also examine whether different patterns can be observed for different cohorts.
In our analysis we define the partner income gap (PIG) as the difference in monthly earnings between cohabiting partners (including zero earnings) and differentiate three types of couples: (1) those who start cohabiting childless and then become parents; (2) those who already have a child from the start of their cohabitation; and (3) those who remain childless.
We observe that there is an income gap (to the female partner’s disadvantage) in all 3 couple “types” at the outset of the cohabitation phase of their relationship. The results show that for those who stay childless and those who started cohabitation with a child, the partner pay gap does not increase or decrease over time – the persistence of the PIG over time in these groups is notable. For those couples who started childless and then became parents, women’s disadvantage grows with relationship duration. Comparing the findings in East and West, we find not only that the income gaps are substantially less pronounced in the East, but also that the growth of the gap in couples who become parents during the observation time is hardly growing over time.
In a second step, following on from Brüderl et al. (2019) the paper also provides an analysis of the effect of having children as a ‘causal pathway’ on Y. We do this through the application of a fixed-effects regressions with a dummy impact function of the effect of having a child on the partner income gap. The findings of these analyses again confirm the strong effects of having a child on the income gap. We also observe that cost of a child, in terms of partner income gap, varies by cohort, and it is declining in younger cohorts.
The role of overconfidence in the gender pay gap
Recent evidence on the gender pay gap has shown that while it is narrowing for the least educated, it has remained stagnant for those with a university degree and is largest for those at the top of the earnings distribution. Attempts to explain the gap using non-cognitive traits have been limited despite a literature highlighting the fact that some of the gap may be attributable to women not “leaning in” while men are more overconfident in their abilities. We probe this hypothesis using longitudinal data from childhood into mid-career and construct a measure of overconfidence using multiple measures of objective cognitive ability and subjective estimated ability. Our measure confirms previous findings that men are more overconfident than women. We then use linear regression and decomposition techniques to account for the gender pay gap including our measure of overconfidence. Our results show that overconfidence captured in adolescence explains a significant portion of the gender wage gap at age 25, which decreases in importance by age 34 and age 42. This highlights the importance of overconfidence in helping individuals to get on a trajectory of higher earnings early in career.
Sicherung sozialer Teilhabe durch eine Arbeitsplatzgarantie – Erfolge und Herausforderungen des „Modellprojekts Arbeitsplatzgarantie Marienthal“ (MAGMA) des AMS Niederösterreich nach einem Jahr Laufzeit
International wird derzeit eine „Arbeitsplatzgarantie” als Lösung für das Problem der Langzeitarbeitslosigkeit diskutiert. Der Staat kann damit auf die Ausgrenzung vieler Personen aus dem allgemeinen Arbeitsmarkt reagieren und zugleich bisher fehlende Leistungen für die Allgemeinheit zur Verfügung stellen. Das „Modellprojekt Arbeitsplatzgarantie Marienthal“ (MAGMA) des AMS Niederösterreich setzt das Konzept erstmals in Österreich um. Es bietet allen lang-zeitbeschäftigungslosen Personen in der Gemeinde Gramatneusiedl über die Dauer des Projekts von dreieinhalb Jahren einen gemeinnützigen Arbeitsplatz. Mit dem Forschungsprojekt „Marienthal.reversed“ begleitet das Institut für Soziologie der Universität Wien MAGMA wissenschaftlich. Ziel dieser Längsschnittstudie ist es, die Wirkungen von MAGMA auf die bisher langzeitbeschäftigungslosen Personen über einen Zeitraum von drei Jahren wissenschaftlich zu untersuchen. In der ersten Welle der Erhebungen fiel die Heterogenität der Teilnehmenden, ihrer Bedürfnisse und Erwartungen als große Herausforderung für das Modellprojekt auf. Nach einem Jahr Projektlaufzeit zeigten sich bereits einige positive Wirkungen der Maßnahme. Das betrifft insbesondere einzelne Aspekte der Lebenszufriedenheit, die finanzielle Situation eines Teils der Teilnehmenden, Aspekte der Gesundheit und Fragen der sozialen Inklusion und Anerkennung. Im Projekt ist es sehr gut gelungen, auf gesundheitliche Einschränkungen ihre Betreuungspflichten Rücksicht zu nehmen. Weniger häufig sind Teilnehmende mit den Tätigkeiten zufrieden und mit den Möglichkeiten, sich beruflich weiter zu entwickeln. Der Vortrag stellt die Zielsetzung und Anlage des Modellprojekts vor, zeigt anhand der erhobenen Daten die Wahrnehmungen der Teilnehmenden und die Wirkungen der Maßnahme nach einem Jahr auf und diskutiert auf dieser Basis die Chancen und Dilemmata des Konzepts der Arbeitsplatzgarantie.
Partizipation und Un_gleichzeitigkeit. Eine Herausforderung für die digitale Mitbestimmung
Die digitale Transformation stellt nicht nur Geschäftsmodelle von Unternehmen und ihre Produktionsweisen auf den Prüfstand, sondern auch die sozialen Beziehungen im Betrieb. Die betrieblichen Akteure müssen die Beziehungen zu den Stakeholdern neu bewerten und gegebenenfalls neu aufbauen. Denn digitale Kommunikationsmedien versprechen instantane Erreichbarkeit und steigern die Erwartungen an Transparenz des Handelns. Betriebsräte als institutionelle Akteure der Mitbestimmung im Betrieb sind hiervon besonders betroffen. Im Vortrag werden die Ergebnisse eines interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekts präsentiert, die nahe legen, dass im Zuge der digitalen Transformation die Institution Betriebsrat selbst strukturell verändert wird.
Designing labor market recommender systems: the importance of job seeker preferences and competition
We examine the properties of a recommender system we developed at the Public Employment Service (PES) in France, prior to its implementation in the field. The algorithm uses past matches and a very large set of covariates to produce, for each job seeker, a ranking of the available offers and score each pair jobseeker-offer. Using a calibration step that takes advantage of the observation of application sequences, it gives a predicted "matching probability" for each pair. After a theoretical discussion about the possible strategies to design a recommender system, we compare this new machine learning (ML) algorithm with another matching tool, mimicking the one currently used at the PES, based on a score measuring the "closeness" between the jobseeker's search criteria or preferences and the characteristics of the offer. We quantify the trade-off between the matching probability and the later "preference score" when switching from one system to the other. Next, we examine the issue of congestion. We show that, on the one hand the ML algorithm based on past matches tends to increase congestion and on the other hand that this strongly reduces its performance. Finally, we show that the use of optimal transport to derive recommendations from the matching probability matrix significantly alleviates this problem. The main lesson at this stage is that an algorithm ignoring preferences and competition in the labor market would have very limited performances but that tweaking the algorithm to fit these dimensions substantially improves its properties, at least "in the lab".
The refugee mobility puzzle: Why do refugees move to cities with high unemployment rate?
Social science research demonstrates that dispersal policies and restrictions on the freedom of residence have inhibited refugees’ socio-economic integration, presumably because such policies prevent refugees from moving to places where they can employ their skills most fruitfully. However, studies of refugees’ actual residential choices provide little evidence that good economic prospects attract refugees, and some even suggest that refugees often move to deprived cities with frail labor markets. The combination of negative effects of residence restrictions and emerging evidence of disadvantaging secondary migration forms what we call the ‘refugee mobility puzzle’. In this study, we aim at unpacking this puzzle by analyzing the inner-German migration patterns of recent refugees. Specifically, we ask: What attracts refugees to deprived areas, and can their seemingly unfortunate residential choices be understood as moves to opportunity and increased prospects of labor market integration after all? Empirically, we draw on the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees and track the location of more than 2,000 refugee respondents who were exogenously allocated a place of residence and subsequently became free to move. Based on linear-probability discrete choice models across all German counties and postcodes, we confirm that refugees tend to move to areas with high unemployment. We show that major attractors like housing availability, co-ethnic networks, and service-oriented labor markets are clustered in areas with high unemployment. Taken together, our results complicate recent critiques of dispersal policies and restrictions. On the one hand, our findings show that seemingly disadvantaging relocations into high unemployment areas can conceal potentially improved economic perspectives in relevant labor markets. On the other hand, refugees’ search for affordable housing may turn into an unintended lock-in factor in the mid- and long-run.
Wage Differentials and the Price of Workplace Flexibility
This paper studies the interplay between how much workers value workplace flexibility, whether they have such amenities, and how the presence of amenities affects their wages. To overcome the challenge of eliciting quantitative measures of willingness to pay (WTP) at the individual level, we propose the use of dynamic choice experiments, a method which we call the Bayesian Adaptive Choice Experiment (BACE). We implement this method to collect data on the joint distribution of wages, work arrangements, and WTP for different forms of flexibility. We then introduce and estimate a model in which workers may face different prices for job amenities depending on their productivity, extending the Rosen (1986) model of compensating differentials. The model captures key patterns in the data, including (i) the relationship between wages and having amenities, (ii) inequality in workplace amenities across the earnings distribution even when workers value these amenities similarly, and (iii) the tradeoffs across different forms of flexibility. We use the estimates to explore the welfare consequences of workers facing different amenity prices.
Old habits die hard? School guidance interventions and the persistence of inequalities
Social disparities in track choices are a well-known mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of inequality. School guidance may help reducing such disparities by narrowing information gaps and by reducing the family influence on students’ decision making. We investigate the potential equalizing role of guidance programs by analysing an intervention carried out in Italy, where students are tracked at age 14 and teacher recommendations are non-binding. The intervention took place in 2018 in the city of Turin and involved 40% of all eighth-grade students, shortly before their transition from comprehensive to tracked education. The students attended four two-hour sessions designed to provide them with information about the educational system and related job market opportunities, and to raise their awareness of their aptitudes and inclinations. We expected the programme to be of particular benefit to low socio-economic status (SES) and migrant students and thus to reduce social gaps in track choices. We adopted a mixed-method research design: with quantitative analyses based on a combination of propensity-score-matching and differences-in-differences techniques, we compared the outcomes of comparable students from the 2017 and 2018 cohorts who were or were not exposed to the intervention in order to assess its impact on inequality; additionally, we use qualitative non-participatory observation to unveil the actual content and implementation of the program and the behaviour of the key actors. We find that while the program contributed to reducing indecision, probably by compelling students to reflect more carefully about their decisions during this crucial transition, it did not have any major effect on social inequalities. Results from the qualitative analysis help us shed light on the mechanisms at play behind this lack of effect. In particular, the heavy emphasis placed on current achievement records, dropout risks, and (short-term) labour-market outcomes may counteract the equalizing potential of the program by pushing low-SES and migrant students towards vocational tracks.