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Natural disasters are growing in frequency globally. Understanding how vulnerable populations respond to these disasters is essential for an effective policy response. This paper explores the short- and long-run consequences of the 1906 San Francisco Fire, one of the largest urban fires in American history. Using linked Census records, I follow residents of San Francisco and their children from 1900 to 1940. Historical records suggest that exogenous factors such as wind and the availability of water determined where the fire stopped. I implement a spatial regression discontinuity design across the boundary of the razed area to identify the effect of the fire on those who lost their home to it. I find that in the short run, the fire displaced affected residents, forced them into lower-paying occupations and out of entrepreneurship. Experiencing the disaster disrupted children’s school attendance and led to an average loss of six months of education. While most effects attenuated over time, the negative effect on business ownership persists even in 1940, 34 years after the fire. Therefore, my findings reject the hope for a “reversal of fortune” for the victims, in contrast to what is found for more recent natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina.

Die Einführung des gesetzlichen Mindestlohns in Deutschland hat zu neuen Anforderungen der Datennutzer an die amtliche Verdienststatistik geführt. Das Statistische Bundesamt hat daraufhin die gesamte Verdienststatistik reformiert und ein Konzept implementiert, dass ab 2022 eine neue monatliche Verdiensterhebung mit über 7 Mio. Datensätzen von Beschäftigten vorsieht.
Im Rahmen dieses Colloquiums stellen wir Ihnen das Konzept dieser neuen Erhebung vor und erläutern Ihnen die Erhebungsmethodik. Ferner verschaffen wir Ihnen einen Überblick über den Merkmalskatalog und werfen einen Blick auf die Auswertungs- und Analysepotenziale dieser neuen Verdiensterhebung.

This paper presents estimates of the causal effect of the default marital property regime on female labour supply, fertility, marriage, and marital dissolution rates utilising the regional variation in the default marital property system in Spain and the 2005 divorce reform. Property rights theory predicts that under contractual incompleteness ownership of physical assets affects investments, and that joint ownership provides the strongest incentives to make relationship-specific investments, while non-integration encourages non-specific investments. My findings are consistent with these predictions: separation of property promotes higher female labour supply, having no more than two children, and a lower marriage rate than community property. The divorce rate remains largely unaffected by the property regime type.

This paper examines how and why returning to education to attain a high school diploma combats earnings penalties due to negative employment shocks. High school dropout continues to be a problem, particularly as employment is increasingly skilled over time. Following a policy expanding a Norwegian vocational certification scheme, displaced workers certify their skills at significantly higher rates relative to those displaced pre-expansion. Increases in certification post-expansion significantly reduce income losses after job loss. Certifying skills fosters recovery among early career displaced workers through the retention of relevant industry-specific human capital, which increases job stability over 20 years later.

People who say that they are better off socioeconomically are healthier than those who say that they are worse off, even when only comparing people whose objective socioeconomic status is the same. This association between perceived socioeconomic status and health has intrigued social scientists for various reasons. Some suggest that the finding shows that it is feelings of inferiority by which social conditions "come under the skin." Others suggest that it shows how our objective measures of  socioeconomic status fail to capture stratification in contemporary societies. In our study, we take a step back to re-examine the perceived socioeconomic status-health association in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA). Using hybrid, within-between panel regression models and allostatic load as biomarker health outcome, we show that perceived socioeconomic status is only associated with health in comparisons across individuals, in within-specifications where participants serve as their own controls, no association can be found. In a further step, we show how the between-participant association is driven by personality traits and childhood experiences. We discuss the implications of our findings. This is joint work with Lindsay Richards, University of Oxford, and Asri Maharani, University of Manchester.

Most organizations rely on managers to identify talented workers. However, because managers are evaluated on team performance, they have an incentive to hoard talented workers, thus jeopardizing the efficient allocation of talent within firms. This study documents talent hoarding using the universe of application and hiring decisions at a large manufacturing firm. When managers rotate to a new position and temporarily stop hoarding talent, workers' applications for promotions increase by 128%. Marginal applicants, who would not have applied in the absence of manager rotations, are three times as likely average applicants to land a promotion, and perform well in higher-level positions. By reducing the quality and performance of promoted workers, talent hoarding causes misallocation of talent within the firm. Female workers react more to managerial talent hoarding than their male counterparts, meaning that talent hoarding perpetuates gender inequality in representation and pay at the firm.

Im Rahmen der Kernprozesse in der öffentlichen Verwaltung steht dokumentenbasierte Sachbearbeitung weiterhin im Vordergrund. Die Transformation in Richtung einer informationsbasierten Sachbearbeitung sieht IBM als obligatorisch an mit Blick auf IT- und Prozesskosten sowie Datenschutz. Neben der am Markt etablierten Textextraktion und -klassifikation ist insbesondere im Bereich der Dokumentenvalidierung das Thema Bilderkennung zentral. IBM hat in Projekten eine offene Dokumentenverarbeitungsplattform entwickelt, die es erlaubt, auch diese Bildverarbeitung vorzunehmen. Der exemplarisch vorgestellte Usecase betrachtet die Dokumentenechtheitsprüfung am Beispiel der Stempelerkennung mittels Open Source basierten Algorithmen und mit Fokus auf Erklärbarkeit der KI.

Motivated by a reduced-form evaluation of the impacts of the German nationally uniform minimum wage on labour, goods and housing markets, we develop a quantitative spatial general equilibrium model with monopsonistic competition and monopsonistic labour markets. The model predicts that the employment effect of a minimum wage is a bell-shaped function of the minimum wage level. Consistent with the model prediction, we find the largest positive employment effects in regions where the minimum wage correspond to 46\% of the pre-policy median wage and negative employment effects in regions where the minimum exceeds 80\% of the pre-policy median wage. After estimating the structural parameters and inverting the structural fundamentals, we use the quantified model to derive minimum wage schedules that maximize employment or welfare.

We use a quasi-experimental design and national administrative data to analyze the intergenerational effects of introducing non-search activity requirements for long-term unemployment benefit recipients aged 18-34. The young adults we study were in early adolescence in 1999 when the requirements were introduced. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find that young adults whose fathers were subject to the requirements have a lower incidence of unemployment benefit receipt compared to those whose fathers were not. More detailed investigation suggests that completion of the mandated activities, role modeling, changes in attitudes, improved health, and greater support and stability are potential channels.

Der massive Anstieg der Studierenden- und Promovierendenzahlen in den letzen Jahrzehnten hat zur Folge, dass auch die Anzahl der Studien- bzw. Promotionsabbrüche - bei relativ konstant bleibenden Abbruchquoten - deutlich zunimmt. Was sind die individuellen Folgen solcher Abbrüche? Welche Personengruppen sind besonders „gefährdet“ - und warum? Im Vortrag werden drei aktuelle Studien vorgestellt, die sich mit verschiedenen Facetten abgebrochener Bildungsverläufe befassen.
In der ersten Studie wird ein experimenteller Ansatz zur Abschätzung der individuellen Arbeitsmarktfolgen eines Studienabbruchs vorgestellt. Zwei Fragen stehen im Mittelpunkt:  1. Was sind die (kausalen) Folgen eines Studienabbruchs bei Bewerbungen auf verschiedene Stellen? 2. Welche Faktoren begünstigen im Falle eines Studienabbruchs die Einladungswahrscheinlichkeit zu einem Vorstellungsgespräch? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen wurden über 1.000 Arbeitgeber und Arbeitgeberinnen im Rahmen von faktoriellen Surveyexperimenten befragt.

In der zweiten Studie geht es um Studien(miss)erfolge von Studierenden mit Migrationshintergrund. Während eine wachsende Zahl an Studien die Ursachen ambitionierter Bildungsentscheidungen von Migrant:innen diskutiert, liegen bislang kaum Studien zu den Konsequenzen dieser Entscheidungen vor. Wir argumentieren, dass ambitionierte Bildungsentscheidungen am Übergang in die Hochschule eine Schattenseite haben, da sie häufig Studienmisserfolge nach sich ziehen. Zur Überprüfung der Vorhersagen dienen Daten des Nationalen Bildungspanels (NEPS).

Die dritte Studie befasst sich mit Promotionsabbrüchen, einem in Deutschland empirisch kaum erforschten Thema, das nicht zuletzt im Zuge der #ichbinHanna Debatte an Brisanz gewinnt. Auf Basis deutschlandweiter Paneldaten des DZHW werden Zusammenhänge verschiedener individueller und institutioneller Merkmale mit der Promotionsabbruchwahrscheinlichkeit analysiert und diskutiert.