Research

Work in Progress       Published Papers       Working Papers

Work in Progress

Covid-19, work from home, and labor market trajectories in the long run

(with Kamila Cygan-Rehm, Klara Kaliskova and Maike Steffen)

The Covid-19 pandemic was a severe shock to employers and employees in the form of substantial restrictions on face-to-face meetings, leading to an unexpected increase in work-from-home (WFH) arrangements. This may have affected the way individuals work and the skills they need to successfully adapt to the new working conditions. In this paper, we use the sharp increase in WFH in Germany in March 2020 as a natural experiment to examine its long-term effects on the labor market trajectories and human capital of affected workers. To this end, we combine survey data on the occupational WFH potential of a given job with individual data on labor market biographies from German social security records. Using event studies and a difference-in-difference design, we compare the career trajectories of individuals who held jobs with high and low WFH potential immediately before the pandemic. We pay particular attention to potential gender differences, as the pandemic disproportionately affected parents, especially women.

Enrolling in Bad Times: College Persistence and Labor Market Outcomes

(with Matias Cortes, Kelly Foley, Jacopo Mazza and Peter McHenry)

Using administrative data covering the universe of student enrollments in public universities in Canada since 2009, we show that individuals who start an undergraduate degree when unemployment is high are less likely to graduate within five years. Compositional changes along observable student characteristics including gender, age at enrollment, and parental income do not account for this result, nor does sorting across universities or fields of study. While a simple model of negative selection into university during downturns can account for the decline in graduation rates, it would imply that post-schooling earnings should be lower among non-completers who enroll during high unemployment periods compared to those who enroll when unemployment is lower. Using a panel of administrative tax data linked to the student enrollment records, we show that higher unemployment rates at enrollment are not associated with lower annual earnings among non-completers. A model that features heterogeneity in the idiosyncratic costs of post-secondary education can rationalize this result.

Beyond Test Scores: The Effect of School Entry Age on Cognitive Processes

(with Jaroslav Groero)

This paper examines how school starting age affects the development of specific cognitive skills that underpin human capital formation. We link school entry timing to narrow cognitive abilities using high-resolution psychometric data from children aged 8 to 13. We exploit a cutoff rule policy that assigns school eligibility based on month of birth and estimate the intention-to-treat (ITT) effect of starting school later on specific cognitive skills using regression discontinuity design. Combining the results from two models with different sets of fixed effects allow us to gain interpretive leverage on underlying mechanisms. Delayed entry improves both inductive reasoning and learning effectiveness when comparing children (of different age) within the same grade, but only enhances learning effectiveness when comparing children of the same age (across grades), suggesting that maturity drives gains in reasoning, while instruction contributes to learning effectiveness. The effects are stronger for boys and children from lower-educated families, indicating that delayed entry may serve as a compensatory input for disadvantaged groups. Our findings provide new evidence on the specific cognitive channels through which early schooling decisions affect long-run skill development.

Can High-Stakes Entrance Exams Explain Why Fewer Women Study STEM Fields?

(with Miroslava Federicova and Barbara Pertold-Gebicka) 

This paper examines whether high-stakes entrance exams for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) college programs contribute to the persistent gender imbalance in these fields. While girls perform similarly to boys in mathematics during high school, their representation in STEM programs remains significantly lower. The study exploits institutional changes in admission policies at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University between 2006 and 2023 to analyze how the abolition and subsequent reintroduction of entrance exams affected applications, enrollments, and academic performance of women. The findings suggest that differential attitude by gender towards stress and competitive admission environments may be contributing to their lower participation in STEM fields.