Jonas Jessen - Work in progress

Work in progress

Working papers

Separate Housework Spheres cite
Revise & resubmit at Journal of Labor Economics
with Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, Felix Weinhardt and Jan Berkes

Using novel time-use data from Germany before and after reunification, we document two facts: First, spouses who both work full-time exhibit similar housework patterns whether they do so voluntarily or due to a full-time mandate, as in the GDR. Second, men's amount of housework is independent of their spouse's labour supply. We theoretically explain this pattern by the presence of two household goods and socially learned gender-specific comparative advantage in their home production. We label this gender specialisation as separate housework spheres. Empirical evidence strongly confirms separate housework spheres in the GDR, West Germany, subsequent years post-reunification, and in international time-use data across 17 countries since the 1970s. We consider several implications, such as those for child penalties, where separate housework spheres provide a novel explanation for why it is the mothers whose labour market outcomes strongly deteriorate upon the arrival of children.

Twitter thread

Child Penalties in Labour Market Skills cite
Conditionally accepted at European Economic Review
with Lavinia Kinne and Michele Battisti

Child penalties in labour market outcomes are well-documented: after childbirth, employment and earnings of mothers drop persistently compared to fathers. Beyond gender norms, a potential driver could be the loss in labour market skills due to mothers' longer employment interruptions. This paper estimates child penalties in adult cognitive skills by adapting the pseudo-panel approach to a single cross-section of 29 countries in the PIAAC dataset. We find a long-term drop in numeracy skills after childbirth of 0.12 standard deviations for fathers and a 0.06 standard deviations larger drop for mothers with the difference being marginally significant. Estimates of child penalties in skills strongly depend on controlling for pre-determined characteristics, especially education. Additionally, there is no evidence for worse occupational skill matches for mothers after childbirth. Our findings suggest that changes in general labour market skills can at best explain a small fraction of child penalties in labour market outcomes, and that a cross-sectional estimation of child penalties can be sensitive to characteristics of the outcome variable.

Twitter thread

Moral Hazard among the Employed: Evidence from Regression Discontinuity cite
with Robin Jessen, Andrew C. Johnston and Ewa Gałecka-Burdziak
VoxEU column

We exploit policy discontinuities in Poland's unemployment insurance to examine the causal effect of both benefit durations and levels. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we uncover three findings: (1) Higher benefit levels distort employment more than benefit extensions. (2) Benefit durations and levels interact: Longer durations substantially increase the distortionary effect of more generous payments. (3) Higher payments increase the transition of employed workers into unemployment. We develop a model of optimal unemployment insurance that accounts for moral hazard among both employed and unemployed workers. Notably, for level increases, distortionary costs are larger among the employed than unemployed.

Maternal life satisfaction and child development from toddlerhood to adolescence cite
Revise & resubmit at Review of Economics of the Household (resubmitted)
with Nabanita Datta Gupta and C. Katharina Spiess

In this paper we analyse the association between maternal well-being and child development at different ages. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) which captures maternal life satisfaction and numerous cognitive and non-cognitive child development outcomes. We identify a strong positive association between mothers’ life satisfaction and their children’s development when these are toddlers (2-3 years, VAB scores), of primary school age (5-10 years, SEB scores and Big 5) and in adolescence (11-14 years, life satisfaction, school grades and self-reported Big 5). This relationship holds when we control for a wide range of potentially confounding factors, including maternal education, employment, household income and maternal personality traits. We confirm our main findings with an IV estimation where we instrument contemporaneous maternal life satisfaction with that measured pre-birth and with a value-added model as some child outcomes are observed twice at different ages. Our findings suggest that mothers’ life satisfaction is beneficial for their children’s development at all ages and that it is fruitful for policy makers to identify measures through which maternal well-being can be raised.

Drafts coming (hopefully) soon

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace: The Role of Managers and Firm Policies
with Valentina Götz and Ingo E. Isphording

This paper investigates the prevalence and perceived consequences of workplace sexual harassment in Germany, focusing on the role of firm-level policies and managerial characteristics. Using two newly collected matched employer–employee survey modules linked to administrative records, we document both the incidence of harassment and workers’ perceived risk from employee and firm perspectives. We embed a discrete choice experiment to estimate workers’ willingness to forgo earnings in order to avoid harassment-exposed workplaces and to examine the mitigating roles of firm policies and manager gender. Approximately 13% of establishments report recent harassment cases, while 26% of women and 14% of men report lifetime workplace experiences. Gender gaps in reported exposure are not explained by differences in definitions of harassment. Our experimental evidence indicates that workers—particularly women—are willing to forgo substantial earnings to avoid employers with a history of harassment. Female managers and formal harassment policies partially offset these negative valuations. However, only 60% of firms report having formal complaint procedures, and preventive training remains rare. Harassment policies do not systematically reduce perceived risk, but they are positively associated with a stronger discussion culture and higher reporting rates. Trust in employer responses is uneven: women, particularly those with prior exposure to harassment, express significantly lower confidence in managerial action.

A Star Was Born: How Workers Respond To Politically-charged Job Postings
with Pawel Adrjan, Mária Balgová, Simon Jäger and Jason Sockin

While nouns in the German language are gendered toward males, the introduction of the ``gender star'' or ``gender colon'' have allowed for nouns to be interpreted as not assigning gender, or non-binary. Their usage however has become highly politically polarizing. Using over 40 million online job postings from 2016 to 2023, we document the rising prevalence of the gender star and colon in the German labor market, particularly in German counties with greater support for the Green party. We then study how jobseekers respond when the advertised job title includes such non-binary punctuation. Inclusive job ads receive more clicks and lead to more application starts. The positive effect is larger for the colon and holds when exploiting within firm and job title variation and looking at large companies with rapid increase over time. Finally, using a survey experiment, we investigate how such politically-charged signals in job ads affect sorting and labor market polarization.

How Much Should We Trust Stated-Choice Experiments? Evidence From Job Choice with a Priced Amenity
with Pawel Adrjan, Mária Balgová, Simon Jäger and Jason Sockin

Adoption of AI in Europe and the US
with Alexander Bick, Adam Blandin, David J. Deming and Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln

Using Survey Responses to Estimate the MPE
with Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln, Pinchuan Ong and Jessica Pan

What Happens When You Reduce Labour Market Flexibility? Evidence from Spain
with Pawel Adrjan and Carlos Victoria Lanzón

Extending Unemployment Benefits for Older Workers: Effects on Unemployment Duration and the Interaction with the Pension System
with Ewa Gałecka-Burdziak, Robin Jessen and Izabela Wnuk-Soares

The Effects of Subsidizing Mobility for the Long-term Unemployed
with Kai Miele

Human Resource Managers and Wage Inequality
with Daron Acemoglu, Elliott Ash, Simon Jäger and Suresh Naidu

Dormant

Aggregating evidence on capital and training programs for micro-enterprises in developing countries
with Nathan Fiala, Tim Kaiser and Juliane Kloidt

We aggregate 622 treatment effects reported in 53 field experiments in 27 developing countries to study the relative effectiveness of capital and training programs for small- and micro-enterprises on business- and household outcomes. The average effect of interventions on all outcomes is 0.1 sigma and treatment effects are highly generalizable across contexts with no evidence of fade-out. We find that statistical effect sizes of capital (credit and grants) and training interventions (business training and consulting) are similar with no evidence for complementarities of interventions. We find no strong evidence of heterogeneous effects by outcome, gender of the beneficiary or business types.

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