Department Profiles
Research Profiles of the IWH Departments All doctoral students are allocated to one of the four research departments (Financial Markets – Laws, Regulations and Factor Markets –…
See page
Where STEM Graduates Stem From? The Intergenerational Transmission of Comparative Skill Advantages
Eric A. Hanushek, Babs Jacobs, Guido Schwerdt, Rolf van der Velden, Stan Vermeulen, Simon Wiederhold
VoxEU,
Juni
2023
Abstract
The standard economic model of occupational choice following a basic Roy model emphasizes individual selection and comparative advantage, but the sources of comparative advantage are not well understood. We employ a unique combination of Dutch survey and registry data that links math and language skills across generations and permits analysis of the intergenerational transmission of comparative skill advantages. Exploiting within-family between-subject variation in skills, we show that comparative advantages in math of parents are significantly linked to those of their children. A causal interpretation follows from a novel IV estimation that isolates variation in parent skill advantages due to their teacher and classroom peer quality. Finally, we show the strong influence of family skill transmission on children’s choices of STEM fields.
Read article
Where Do STEM Graduates Stem from? The Intergenerational Transmission of Comparative Skill Advantages
Eric A. Hanushek, Babs Jacobs, Guido Schwerdt, Rolf van der Velden, Stan Vermeulen, Simon Wiederhold
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 13,
2023
Abstract
The standard economic model of occupational choice following a basic Roy model emphasizes individual selection and comparative advantage, but the sources of comparative advantage are not well understood. We employ a unique combination of Dutch survey and registry data that links math and language skills across generations and permits analysis of the intergenerational transmission of comparative skill advantages. Exploiting within-family between-subject variation in skills, we show that comparative advantages in math of parents are significantly linked to those of their children. A causal interpretation follows from a novel IV estimation that isolates variation in parent skill advantages due to their teacher and classroom peer quality. Finally, we show the strong influence of family skill transmission on children’s choices of STEM fields.
Read article
Robots and Female Employment in German Manufacturing
Liuchun Deng, Steffen Müller, Verena Plümpe, Jens Stegmaier
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings,
May
2023
Abstract
We analyze the impact of robot adoption on female employment. Our analysis is based on novel micro data on robot use by German manufacturing establishments linked with social security records. An event study analysis for robot adoption shows increased churning among female workers. Whereas hiring rises significantly at robot adoption, separations increase with a smaller magnitude one year later. Overall, employment effects are modestly positive and strongest for medium-qualified women. We find no adverse employment effects for female workers in any of our broad qualification groups.
Read article
The Characteristics and Geographic Distribution of Robot Hubs in U.S. Manufacturing Establishments
Erik Brynjolfsson, Catherine Buffington, Nathan Goldschlag, J. Frank Li, Javier Miranda, Robert Seamans
Abstract
We use data from the Annual Survey of Manufactures to study the characteristics and geography of investments in robots across U.S. manufacturing establishments. We find that robotics adoption and robot intensity (the number of robots per employee) is much more strongly related to establishment size than age. We find that establishments that report having robotics have higher capital expenditures, including higher information technology (IT) capital expenditures. Also, establishments are more likely to have robotics if other establishments in the same Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA) and industry also report having robotics. The distribution of robots is highly skewed across establishments’ locations. Some locations, which we call Robot Hubs, have far more robots than one would expect even after accounting for industry and manufacturing employment. We characterize these Robot Hubs along several industry, demographic, and institutional dimensions. The presence of robot integrators and higher levels of union membership are positively correlated with being a Robot Hub.
Read article
Robots, Occupations, and Worker Age: A Production-unit Analysis of Employment
Liuchun Deng, Steffen Müller, Verena Plümpe, Jens Stegmaier
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 5,
2023
Abstract
We analyse the impact of robot adoption on employment composition using novel micro data on robot use in German manufacturing plants linked with social security records and data on job tasks. Our task-based model predicts more favourable employment effects for the least routine-task intensive occupations and for young workers, with the latter being better at adapting to change. An event-study analysis of robot adoption confirms both predictions. We do not find adverse employment effects for any occupational or age group, but churning among low-skilled workers rises sharply. We conclude that the displacement effect of robots is occupation biased but age neutral, whereas the reinstatement effect is age biased and benefits young workers most.
Read article
Paying Outsourced Labor: Direct Evidence from Linked Temp Agency-Worker-Client Data
Andres Drenik, Simon Jäger, Pascuel Plotkin, Benjamin Schoefer
Review of Economics and Statistics,
No. 1,
2023
Abstract
We estimate how much firms differentiate pay premia between regular and outsourced workers in temp agency work arrangements. We leverage unique Argentinian administrative data that feature links between user firms (the workplaces where temp workers perform their labor) and temp agencies (their formal employers). We estimate that a high-wage user firm that pays a regular worker a 10% premium pays a temp worker on average only a 4.9% premium, compared to what these workers would earn in a low-wage user firm in their respective work arrangements—the midpoint between the benchmarks for insiders (one) and the competitive spot-labor market (zero).
Read article
Organised Labour, Labour Market Imperfections, and Employer Wage Premia
Sabien Dobbelaere, Boris Hirsch, Steffen Müller, Georg Neuschäffer
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 20,
2022
published in: ILR Review
Abstract
This paper examines how collective bargaining through unions and workplace co-determination through works councils relate to labour market imperfections and how labour market imperfections relate to employer wage premia. Based on representative German plant data for the years 1999–2016, we document that 70% of employers pay wages below the marginal revenue product of labour and 30% pay wages above. We further find that the prevalence of wage mark-downs is significantly smaller when organised labour is present and that the ratio of wages to the marginal revenue product of labour is significantly bigger. Finally, we document a close link between labour market imperfections and mean employer wage premia, that is wage differences between employers corrected for worker sorting.
Read article
Do Firms Respond to Gender Pay Gap Transparency?
Morten Bennedsen, Elena Simintzi, Margarita Tsoutsoura, Daniel Wolfenzon
Journal of Finance,
No. 4,
2022
Abstract
We examine the effect of pay transparency on the gender pay gap and firm outcomes. Using a 2006 legislation change in Denmark that requires firms to provide gender-disaggregated wage statistics, detailed employee-employer administrative data, and difference-in-differences and difference-in-discontinuities designs, we find that the law reduces the gender pay gap, primarily by slowing wage growth for male employees. The gender pay gap declines by 2 percentage points, or 13% relative to the prelegislation mean. Despite the reduction of the overall wage bill, the wage transparency mandate does not affect firm profitability, likely because of the offsetting effect of reduced firm productivity.
Read article
Offshoring, Domestic Employment and Production. Evidence from the German International Sourcing Survey
Wolfhard Kaus, Markus Zimmermann
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 14,
2022
Abstract
This paper analyses the effect of offshoring (i.e., the relocation of activities previously performed in-house to foreign countries) on various firm outcomes (domestic employment, production, and productivity). It uses data from the International Sourcing Survey (ISS) 2017 for Germany, linked to other firm level data such as business register and ITGS data. First, we find that offshoring is a rare event: In the sample of firms with 50 or more persons employed, only about 3% of manufacturing firms and 1% of business service firms have performed offshoring in the period 2014-2016. Second, difference-in-differences propensity score matching estimates reveal a negative effect of offshoring on domestic employment and production. Most of this negative effect is not because the offshoring firms shrink, but rather because they don’t grow as fast as the non-offshoring firms. We further decompose the underlying employment dynamics by using direct survey evidence on how many jobs the firms destroyed/created due to offshoring. Moreover, we do not find an effect on labour productivity, since the negative effect on domestic employment and production are more or less of the same size. Third, the German data confirm previous findings for Denmark that offshoring is associated with an increase in the share of ‘produced goods imports’, i.e. offshoring firms increase their imports for the same goods they continue to produce domestically. In contrast, it is not the case that offshoring firms increase the share of intermediate goods imports (a commonly used proxy for offshoring), as defined by the BEC Rev. 5 classification.
Read article
