Publications
Don’t stop believin’ - Heterogeneous updating of intergenerational mobility perceptions across income groups (2024), with Philipp Warum
In: Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol.225, 1-19
Abstract
This article presents a novel explanation why demand for redistribution on average does not respond to information on low intergenerational mobility. Building on insights from behavioral economics, we expect that incentives to update perceptions of intergenerational mobility change along the income distribution. Empirically, we conduct a survey experiment in Austria and show that the average treatment effect of information on perceptions is mostly driven by higher income individuals while low-income respondents hardly react. We replicate this result for the United States and Germany using data from two closely related survey experiments (Alesina, Stantcheva, and Teso, 2018; Fehr, Müller, and Preuß, 2022). Thus, the frequently observed unresponsiveness of demand for redistribution may result because the group which drives the effect on beliefs does not increase demand for redistribution and may even decrease it. Indeed, despite the strong perception shift in the high-income group, the treatment effects on its preferences are mostly zero and even negative for certain policies. At the same time, the group with the clearest incentives to change its redistributive preferences, the low-income group, is systematically less inclined to update its perceptions and thus their redistributive preferences are mostly unaffected and only partially increased in response to the treatment. We suggest that different responses to information could be due to motivated beliefs, since high social mobility implies for low-income earners that effort is more likely to pay off.
related media coverage: Der Standard
Working Papers
Flying to Mars and Venus - The gendered nature of in-work poverty in Europe (2023)
Abstract
This paper addresses the invisibility of women in in-work poverty research by analyzing the Eurostat in-work poverty indicator in combination with a novel individualized in-work poverty indicator. The latter relies on individual income, but still accounts for the household in defining the poverty threshold. I show that men are more often in-work poor due to assumed sharing with other household members, while women are mostly individually poor, but lifted out of poverty on the household level. The latter is not captured by the Eurostat indicator. This seems to be driven by household dynamics. Living with children makes women more financially dependent on their partner- increases individualized in-work poverty-, which in turn increases the burden on men’s income - increases Eurostat in-work poverty. This pattern is most prevalent in countries with a stronger gender division of labor. My results uncover the blind spots in in-work poverty measurement and additionally highlight the potential of using the individualized indicator to measure financial dependency within the household.
Work in Progress
Reframing Active Labor Market Policy: Field Experiments on Barriers to Program Participation, with Lukas Lehner
registered as AEARCTR-0007141
Abstract
Governments struggle to attract unemployed workers to their widely offered job training programs. In a randomized field experiments with 11,000 job seekers, we investigate the barriers to participation in job training programs using information interventions designed to encourage participation. Raising awareness about the availability of job training increased program enrollment by 18%. Signaling program cost with a voucher on top to reduce internalized stigma increased completion by 28%. Effects were sizable and concentrated among women and low-income job seekers. Notably, increased job training did not result in higher employment or wages. These findings indicate that while low-cost informational interventions effectively boost participation, the overall success of job training programs in enhancing employment prospects hinges on their fundamental design.
code available on: GitHub
related media coverage: Der Standard; Kurier
Multidimensional Social Mobility in Austria, with Alice Kügler, Franziska Disslbacher, Petra Sauer and Moritz Hörl
All the Same? – Job Quality and Heterogeneity Among the Self-employed, with Petra Sauer and Johanna Hofbauer
The effect of relative performance feedback in higher education, with Mario Lackner, Rupert Sausgruber, and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer
registered as AEARCTR-0008977
The effect of unemployment sanctions on labor market outcomes, with Patrick Mokre, Miriam Rehm, and Simon Theurl