Publications
Separations, Ex-Ante Heterogeneity and Labour Market Dynamics with Christian Merkl. (Journal of Monetary Economics, 2025) [Paper] [IZA Working Paper]
Our paper documents the importance of workers' ex-ante heterogeneity for labor market dynamics and for the composition of the unemployment pool. We show that workers with high wages have both lower separation rates and larger log-deviations of these separations over the business cycle than those with low wages. Thereby, more high-wage workers enter the unemployment pool in recessions, leading to a positive correlation between unemployment and the prior wage of those losing their job. Based on administrative data for Germany and two-way fixed effects, we show that worker fixed effects are key for the documented facts. We contrast our empirical results with a search and matching model with worker ex-ante productivity heterogeneity. The simulated model can replicate the empirical facts when calibrated to the measured flow rates and to the relative residual wage dispersion from the administrative data for different wage groups. It is the combination of low steady state separation rates and low residual wage dispersion for high-wage workers that generates the patterns documented in the data.
The Civic Engagement and Social Integration of Refugees in Germany with Paul Berbée, Katia Gallegos-Torres, Martin Lange and Katrin Sommerfeld. (Nonprofit Policy Forum, 2022). [Paper]
Civil society has played an important role in meeting the challenges of refugee migration in recent years. This commentary documents the importance of civic engagement for the integration of refugees by linking individual survey data on refugees to a regional measure of civic engagement in Germany. Using the density of newly established civic associations at the county level as a measure of civic engagement, we exploit regional differences in civic engagement in order to estimate its association with refugee integration outcomes. We find that in regions with particularly high levels of civic engagement, refugees have significantly more frequent contact to Germans, higher life satisfaction, and better German language skills. This correlation is robust to regional contextual factors such as the local population structure, economic strength, and the state of the labor market. In terms of language acquisition, women and refugees with a low level of education benefit the most from high civic engagement. Moreover, refugees with university degrees find significantly better-paying jobs in areas with higher civic engagement. However, no direct correlation could be established between civic engagement and the likelihood that refugees are employed. Nonetheless, the results suggest that support from civil society translates into improved access to government benefits. Our findings highlight that local civic engagement is an important complement to public assistance services and policy makers should give a high priority to partnering with the civil society to improve refugees’ integration outcomes.
Working Papers
The cost of job loss in carbon-intensive sectors: Evidence from Germany with Robert Grundke and Ze`ev Krill. (R&R at Journal of Public Economics) [OECD Working Paper]
Using German administrative data, we estimate the cost of involuntary job displacement for workers in high- and low-carbon-intensity sectors. We find that displaced workers from high carbon-intensity sectors have, on average, higher earnings losses after job displacement, which according to our results is mainly due to human capital specificity, the regional clustering of carbon-intensive activities and higher wage premia in carbon-intensive firms. Workers displaced in high carbon-intensity sectors have fewer outside options for finding jobs with similar skill requirements, face higher local labor market concentration and have a higher probability to switch occupations, sectors, and local labor markets after displacement.
Firms and the Gender Wage Gap: A Comparison of Eleven Countries with Marco G. Palladino, Antoine Bertheau, Alexander Hijzen, Astrid Kunze, Dogan Gülümser, Marta Lachowska, Anne Sophie Lassen, Salvatore Lattanzio, Benjamin Lochner, Stefano Lombardi, Jordy Meekes, Balazs Murakozy and Oskar Skans. (Under Review) [Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Working Paper]
We quantify the role of gender-specific firm wage premiums in explaining the private-sector gender gap in hourly wages using a harmonized research design across 11 matched employer-employee datasets — ten European countries and Washington State, USA. These premiums explain the gender gap when women are less likely to work at high-paying firms (sorting) or receive lower premiums than men within the same firm (pay-setting). We find that firm wage premiums account for a substantial share of variation in gender wage gaps, ranging from 15 to 32 percent. While both mechanisms matter, sorting is the predominant driver of the firm contribution to the gender wage gap in most countries. Three patterns are broadly consistent: (1) women sorting into lower-paying firms becomes increasingly pronounced with age; (2) women are more concentrated in low-paying firms with a high share of part-time workers; and (3) pay-setting gaps are largest in high-wage firms, where women receive about 90 percent of the rents men receive from firm surplus gains.
Left Behind? West-East German Disparities in the Cost of Job Loss (single-authored) [Draft available soon].
This paper studies regional disparities in the cost of job loss. Based on the case of East and West Germany, I document that, despite worse labor market conditions in the East, earnings losses of displaced workers are on average 21% smaller in East Germany compared to West Germany. The West-East gap in earnings losses can be accounted for by differences in the local mix of job destruction. One third of the gap reflects a shift in job destruction in the East away from manufacturing and towards construction following the early reunification period. The remaining two thirds reflect smaller earnings losses in the East within industries, which are linked to lower firm wage premia among East German employers. Structural effects - the earnings losses obtained by holding the local mix of job destruction fixed - allow identifying an earnings penalty for displaced workers in the East that is more in line with its weaker labor market performance. Although regional mobility can mitigate earnings losses, East Germans exhibit limited mobility following job loss, suggesting the presence of barriers to labor mobility.
Work in Progress
Job Loss in High-Emission Industries (with Stefano Lombardi, Alexander Hijzen and the LinkEED team).
Integration of Migrants: Cross-Country Evidence from Linked Employer-Employee Data (with Jaime Arellano-Bover, Ana Damas de Matos, Alexander Hijzen and the LinkEED team).
Low-wage Work and Labor Market Policies: A European Cross-country Study (with Stéphane Carcillo, Jonas Fluchtmann, Alexander Hijzen, Jordy Meekes, Matt Nibloe, Benjamin Lochner, Trine Sorensen and Rune Vejlin).
Dormant Work
Sovereign Defaults and Internal Conflict (draft available upon request).