Using German administrative data, I identify the causal effect of conscription on men's early career wage. My quasi-experimental design exploits a discontinuity in the probability of having served induced by the school start cutoff in connection with the suspension of conscription in 2011. Comparing men born in a narrow window around the cutoff, I find that conscription has a positive effect on wage for men of high educational background. Falsification tests using men and women of different birth years show that the effect is unique to men for whom the school start cutoff induces a discontinuity in the probability of having served. I test several mechanisms: draft avoidance behavior and the selection into broad occupational sectors do not explain my result. Rather, conscription causes men to select into jobs requiring more teamwork, which are on average higher-paying. In connection with qualitative survey evidence of the literature, my results suggest that men under conscription acquire social skills.

This paper provides evidence of costly perseverance in the field. In a setting where consultants select and pursue projects autonomously, I show that perseverance is related with fewer successfully completed projects as well as lower sales and commissions. Using rich firm data on individual job activity, I shed light on the task-specific behavioral mechanisms: In fast markets, the main channel of costly perseverance is a lower number of projects started; in slower markets, costs arise primarily from pursuing projects in a more narrow and isolated way. The survey questions driving costly perseverance point to the consultants' failure to incorporate negative signals and opportunity costs into their effort allocation. Using heterogeneity within and between consultants' task assignment, I show that perseverance is more costly in explorative tasks, as opposed to well-defined tasks characterized by mere exploitation.

We identify the impact of agency in decision-making on women's post-secondary education and family formation outcomes. The reform we investigate lowered the age of legal adulthood from 21 to 18 in 1975 West Germany. Before the reform, academic-track students became legal adults 1-2 years after obtaining university entrance qualification (\textit{Abitur}), and thus needed formal parent consent to enroll in university. As a consequence of the reform, students became legal adults before obtaining university entrance qualification. Our quasi-experimental design exploits variation in school start cutoff dates that vary between federal states. Holding constant federal state and month of birth, we define treatment status as being legal adult at the predicted time of receiving a university entry degree. Using data from the German Microcensus, we show that women reaching legal adulthood before finishing secondary school are more likely to obtain a postsecondary degree, which is driven by university degrees. On the other side, treated women are less likely to marry and have children. Conditional on being married and cohabitating with their partner, they are more likely to have a partner with a university degree as opposed to a vocational degree. Reaching the age of majority earlier thus has lasting effects on major life events and the population composition as a whole.