Draft and slides available upon request

This paper studies the dynamics of job-related training in the context of parenthood, and its implications for the diverging labor market trajectories of men and women after childbirth. Using linked educational and labor market data from Germany and a staggered difference-in-differences strategy, I find that the likelihood of women’s training participation drops by 17 percentage points (35% of the pre-birth training rate) after childbirth, while men show no significant change. Controlling for reduced employment and hours, especially immediately after childbirth, accounts for 40% of this decline. Both demand and supply factors play a role, as firms provide less financial support for the training of mothers, and mothers participate less even when training is supported. Assuming earnings returns to training of 3% each year and monthly motherhood earnings losses of 41%, as estimated within the training dataset, reduced training can explain 5% of the motherhood earnings gap over the first eight years. Thus, accounting for changes in training can contribute to understanding long-lasting negative effects of motherhood on earnings. 

Presented at IAAEU Labor Economics Workshop (Trier), BSoE Gender Economics Workshop (Berlin),12. sozialwissenschaftliche Promotionswerkstatt Rhein-Ruhr (Duisburg), FQMG Brown Bag (Frankfurt), 3rd Naples PhD and Postdoc Workshop (Naples), Verein für Socialpolitik Annual Conference (Cologne), 10th International NEPS conference (Bamberg, scheduled)

joint with Celina Proffen

Latest version: CESifo Working Paper No. 1483

Recording of presentation (by coauthor) here

Non-technical summary for WZB Mitteilungen (in German) here

This paper examines the impact of introducing birthright citizenship in Germany on the educational trajectories of second-generation immigrants. Our identification strategy exploits a legal change in 2000 that granted children of foreigners with longtime residency automatic citizenship at birth. Using high-quality census data, we show that the reform contributes to closing pre-existing educational gaps in secondary school track choice and completion. These findings also hold when relying exclusively on within-household variation across siblings. We provide evidence for the underlying mechanisms, highlighting the roles of higher expected returns to education and of an increased sense of belonging to Germany.

Presented at Bundesinstitut für Bevölkerungsforschung (Wiesbaden), Cemir/ifo Junior Migration Conference (Munich), ZEW Conference on Immigration (Mannheim), OECD Immigration Conference (Paris), Spanish Association of Education Economics (Santiago de Compostela), WSI Herbstforum and PhD Workshop (Berlin), BiGSEM PhD Workshop (Bielefeld), Frankfurt-Mannheim-Bonn PhD Workshop (Frankfurt), FQMG Brown Bag (Frankfurt)

joint with Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln and Alexandra Spitz-Oener

Latest draft here

Podcast generated by NotebookLM here

We document that increased occupational female shares causally lead to lower occupational wages. When the Berlin Wall fell, women in the German Democratic Republic were not only more likely to participate in the labor market than their West German counterparts, but were also distributed differently across occupations. Exploiting German reunification as a natural experiment, we use variation in the gender composition of East and West German occupations as an instrument for changes in occupational female shares in West Germany. We show that the gender composition of an occupation affects its wages. The adverse effects of increasing female shares are pervasive and all-encompassing, and not driven by changes in skill requirements or the task content in occupations. Overall, the results suggest that decreasing occupational segregation might be effective in closing the gender wage gap. However, the mechanism is quite different than the one that is typically discussed.

Slides and draft available upon request

This paper examines the impact of minimum wages on on-the-job training in Germany. Theoretical models predict two potential effects: an increased minimum wage may reduce training if firms offset higher labor costs by converting non-monetary compensation into wages, or it may increase training if firms seek to increase employee productivity to balance the higher wages. The study exploits the 2015 introduction of a statutory minimum wage in Germany and employs firm-level data in a difference-in-differences approach, comparing firms in more and less affected counties. The results show that firms in more strongly affected regions increase both the likelihood of providing any training and the share of trained workers. The additional training is provided primarily in the form of internal courses during working hours, benefits all workers but especially middle-skilled ones, and is concentrated in regions with the lowest pre-reform wages. Effects are present across all sectors and firm sizes, showing that the minimum wage broadly encouraged rather than hindered firm-sponsored training investments.

Presented at Frankfurt-Mannheim-Bonn PhD Conference (Frankfurt) 

with Verónica Escudero

In today's dynamic job market, creating and sustaining decent jobs requires a thorough understanding of current skill demand and its role in facilitating transitions to quality employment. This brief presents an innovative approach leveraging big data and natural language processing to extract skills information from online vacancy data, offering insights into skills dynamics in low- and middle-income economies. Findings reveal notable skill patterns, highlighting the importance of foundational socio-emotional and cognitive skills. This approach empowers policymakers and researchers to deepen their understanding of skills dynamics in previously understudied contexts and inform strategies for employment and skills development initiatives. Harnessing insights from online data opens up vast opportunities for economic development and sustainable growth.

Policy paper on the future of work developed in a writing workshop for a major German environmental organization

with Alena Birnbaum, Christian Haak, Christine Radon, Elke Großer, Frauke Bierau-Delpont und Sarah Brockhaus

with Logan Richard, Leonard Robert Gonzalez, George Turcu, and Lucas Walls

We show that starting from finitely many points in R^m, and successively applying ‘pinches’ on them, it is possible to arrive at any of the configurations that result from applying, to the original points, a homothety of factor 0⩽s⩽1 and centre the centroid of the points. Here, a ‘pinch’ consists in moving two points towards their common centroid. For three points, four pinches suffice. In general, the number of pinches is independent of the original configuration and of m.