• Best Paper Award at YEM 2022 and YEC 2022

• Best Poster Award at EALE 2022: The Poster 

Abstract

I estimate management opposition to unions in terms of hiring discrimination in the German labor market. By sending 13,000 fictitious job applications, revealing union membership in the CV and pro-union sentiment via social media accounts, I provide evidence for hiring discrimination. Callback rates are on average 15% lower for union members. Discrimination is strongest in the presence of a high sectoral share of union members and large firm size. I further explore variation in regional and sectoral strike intensity over time and find suggestive evidence that discrimination increases if a sector is exposed to an intense strike. Discrimination is positively associated with the sectoral share of firms that voluntarily orientate wages to collective agreements. These results indicate that hiring discrimination can be explained by union threat effects.

• Media Coverage: CFO Dive

Abstract

We study how labor market conditions affect unionization decisions. Tight labor markets might spur unionization, eg, by reducing the threat of unemployment after management opposition or employer retaliation in response to a unionization attempt. Tightness might also weaken unionization by providing attractive outside alternatives to engaging in costly unionization. Drawing on a large-scale, representative survey experiment among US workers, we show that an increase in worker beliefs about labor market tightness moderately raises support for union activity. Effect sizes are small as they imply that moving from trough to peak of the business cycle increases workers’ probability of voting for a union by one percentage point. To study equilibrium effects, we draw on three quasi-experimental research designs using data from across US states and counties over several decades. We find no systematic effect of changes in aggregate labor market tightness on union membership, union elections, and strikes. Overall, our results challenge the notion that labor market tightness significantly drives US unionization. 

• Poster

Abstract

I study how hiring discrimination against union supporters is affected by labor market conditions. While conventional economic theory predicts discrimination to decrease in tight labor markets, discrimination against union supporters could also increase due to unions’ improved bargaining power and the threat of unionization. I sent 5,006 fictitious job applications revealing a union membership in the application. I show that discrimination is pro-cyclical in employment, increasing in an economic upturn and decreasing in an economic downturn. There is no effect of occupation-specific labor market tightness on discrimination. Cyclical discrimination is concentrated among firms without a collective agreement. These results suggest discrimination can be explained by unions’ bargaining power and the threat of unionization. This indicates that the emerging labor shortage is unlikely to dampen managements’ opposition to unionization. 

• Poster

Abstract

Using survey experiments in the United States and Germany with 12,000 participants, we examine perceptions of life expectancy inequality between rich and poor people. The life expectancy of the poor is underestimated more than that of the rich, leading to exaggerated perceptions of inequality in both countries. Receiving accurate information narrows concerns about this inequality. However, the impact of information on policy demand is limited because support for policies addressing life expectancy for the poor is consistently high, regardless of varying perceptions of inequality. We conclude that there is strong and unconditional public support for health equity policies. 

Abstract

This study pushes our understanding of research reliability by reproducing and replicating claims from 110 papers in leading economic and political science journals. The analysis involves computational reproducibility checks and robustness assessments. It reveals several patterns. First, we uncover a high rate of fully computationally reproducible results (over 85%). Second, excluding minor issues like missing packages or broken pathways, we uncover coding errors for about 25% of studies, with some studies containing multiple errors. Third, we test the robustness of the results to 5,511 re-analyses. We find a robustness reproducibility of about 70%. Robustness reproducibility rates are relatively higher for re-analyses that introduce new data and lower for re-analyses that change the sample or the definition of the dependent variable. Fourth, 52% of re-analysis effect size estimates are smaller than the original published estimates and the average statistical significance of a re-analysis is 77% of the original. Lastly, we rely on six teams of researchers working independently to answer eight additional research questions on the determinants of robustness reproducibility. Most teams find a negative relationship between replicators' experience and reproducibility, while finding no relationship between reproducibility and the provision of intermediate or even raw data combined with the necessary cleaning codes.

• Slides

• Poster

• Media Coverage: Interview with Perspective Daily (German), Kurier (German)

Abstract 

Based on a correspondence experiment covering 3,124 fictitious job applications, the paper identifies and quantifies duration dependence in Germany, with a particular emphasis on company and vacancy characteristics as potential determinants. The experiment reveals that duration dependence manifests itself in a sharp decline of 26% to 35% in callbacks when an individual has been unemployed for 10 months, pointing to the existence of an unemployment stigma for Germany. The results are driven by labor market tightness, companies’ access to applicants and screening behavior related to company size, with no evidence for an unemployment stigma determined by the contract type.

• Media Coverage: SZ (German), DLF (German), Spiegel (German), Tagesschau (German), idw (German), WN (German)

Abstract

We analyse measures of internal flexibility taken to safeguard employment during the Coronavirus Crisis in comparison to the Great Recession. Cyclical working-time reductions are again a major factor in safeguarding employment. Whereas during the Great Recession all working-time instruments contributed to the reduction in working time, short-time work now accounts for almost all of the working-time reduc-tion. Short-time work was more rapidly extended, more generous, and for the first time a stronger focus was put on securing household income on a broad basis. Still, the current crisis is more severe and affects additional sectors of the economy where low-wage earners are affected more frequently by short-time work and suf-fered on average relatively greater earnings losses. A hypothetical average short-time worker had a relative income loss in April 2020 that was more than twice as large as that in May 2009. Furthermore, marginal employment is affected strongly but not protected by short-time work.

Abstract

This article analyses the relevance of the extensive and the intensive margin of labor adjustment over the business cycle in Germany and in the United States from 1970 to 2014. Previous research has found that, firstly, the extensive margin dominates and that, secondly, the relative relevance of the two margins is of similar magnitude in both countries. This is in contrast with results from the research on the German employment performance in the Great Recession which attributed part of the employment success to the widespread use of instruments of working-time flexibility. Our results confirm that generally over the whole sample period the extensive margin is still the dominant margin of labor adjustment over the business cycle in both countries. While our reassessment shows that the relative importance of the extensive and intensive margin for the United States is stable over time, in contrast in Germany it is quite volatile over time. In general the intensive margin in Germany is more important than in the United States. However, its actual size depends crucially on the choice of the smoothing parameter of the Hodrick-Prescott Filter. In the Great Recession and the subsequent time period the intensive margin is dominant in Germany independent of the choice of the smoothing parameter. The relevance of the intensive margin dramatically increased in recent years in Germany and the intensive margin accounts for nearly 60 to 80% of the change in total hours worked.

Abstract

Germany and the United States pursued different economic strategies to minimise the impact of the Coronavirus Crisis on the labour market. Germany focused on safeguarding existing jobs through the use of internal flexibility measures, especially short-time work (STW). The United States relied on a mix of external flexibility and income protection. On this basis, we use macroeconomic time series to examine the German strategy of securing employment through internal flexibility by contrasting it with the chosen strategy in the United States. In Germany, temporary cyclical reductions in working hours are mainly driven via STW. US unemployment rose at an unprecedented rate, but unlike in previous recessions, it was mostly driven by temporary layoffs. However, a closer look at the blind spots of the chosen strategies in both countries showed that despite the different approaches, people in weaker labour market positions were less well protected by the chosen strategies. 

Abstract

We conduct a computational replication of Atanasov et al. (2023). In total, our analysis covers three variations: we use the cleaned dataset provided in the replication package, we clean the original data ourselves, and finally we extend the dataset to encompass an additional three years of data using the webscraper provided by the authors. The additional data boosts the final observation count by approximately one-quarter. We find that the results are robust; the data in the replication package results in nearly the same estimates and an extension of the data and specifications reduces the effect size and statistical significance, but does not change the conclusions. We further conduct a wide range of robustness checks. While some estimates have smaller effect sizes and lower statistical significance, all results support the original findings.

Abstract

We conduct a replication of Settele (2022), a online survey experiment designed to find out how individual's beliefs about the gender wage gap affect their policy preferences. We reproduce Results 1 and 2 of the study: how prior beliefs around the wage gap are distributed among individuals and how a information treatment causally affects the policy demand. Our re-coded replication shows that the reported results are robust.