IWH Doctoral Programme in Economics
Why Doctoral Studies at IWH? The IWH Doctoral Programme in Economics – one of the Top 20 places to do a PhD ( INOMICS Career Guide 2023 ) The Halle Institute for Economic Research…
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Standards
Achieving Scientific Quality and Meeting Social Standards In order to secure the highest standards, the courses and the research projects will be evaluated. Evaluations form the…
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Study Programme
Study Programme The course programme is a structured curriculum that provides doctoral students with an outstanding training. The programme comprises mandatory First-Year Courses…
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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 –…
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Vocational Training
Vocational Training at IWH At the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) the state-approved professions specialist in media and information services (m/f/x) [library] ,…
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Internationalisation
Internationalisation Our international network enhances research and competitiveness. That is why our researchers cooperate with institutions and peers on a global scale and…
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Cross-country Evidence on the Allocation of COVID-19 Government Subsidies and Consequences for Productivity
Tommaso Bighelli, Tibor Lalinsky, Juuso Vanhala
Journal of the Japanese and International Economies,
June
2023
Abstract
We study the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and related policy support on productivity. We employ an extensive micro-distributed exercise to access otherwise unavailable individual data on firm performance and government subsidies. Our cross-country evidence for five EU countries shows that the pandemic led to a significant short-term decline in aggregate productivity and the direct support to firms had only a limited positive effect on productivity developments. A thorough comparative analysis of the distribution of employment and overall direct subsidies, considering separately also relative firm-level size of support and the probability of being supported, reveals ambiguous cross-country results related to the firm-level productivity and points to the decisive role of other firm characteristics.
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Work-Life Balance
Work-Life-Balance The IWH is family-friendly The Halle Institute for Economic Research constantly reviews and improves its framework for ensuring the compatibility of family and…
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Mental Health
Mental Health Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing cognition, perception, and behavior. According to World Health Organization…
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Discrimination in Universal Social Programs? A Nationwide Field Experiment on Access to Child Care
Henning Hermes, Philipp Lergetporer, Fabian Mierisch, Frauke Peter, Simon Wiederhold
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 12,
2023
Abstract
Although explicit discrimination in access to social programs is typically prohibited, more subtle forms of discrimination prior to the formal application process may still exist. Unveiling this phenomenon, we provide the first causal evidence of discrimination against migrants seeking child care. We send emails from fictitious parents to > 18, 000 early child care centers across Germany, inquiring about slot availability and application procedures. Randomly varying names to signal migration background, we find that migrants receive 4.4 percentage points fewer responses. Replies to migrants contain fewer slot offers, provide less helpful content, and are less encouraging. Exploring mechanisms using three additional treatments, we show that discrimination is stronger against migrant boys. This finding suggests that anticipated higher effort required for migrants partly drives discrimination, which is also supported by additional survey and administrative data. Our results highlight that difficult-to-detect discrimination in the pre-application phase could hinder migrants’ access to universal social programs.
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