Research

Working Papers and Work in Progress:

2-Worker households with income sharing generate intra-household insurance against negative income shocks. In a labor market with heterogeneous separation risks, the presence of a spouse tilts the risk-wage trade-off towards high risk & high wage jobs and implies different 2-dimensional job-ladders for singles and couples. The quantitative model, based on German SIAB data, reproduces empirical job distributions, and shows substitutability of intra-household insurance and precautionary savings. As a policy experiment, counterfactual spouse-independent unemployment insurance schemes and separate taxation are evaluated.

(Presented 2023: RGS Doctoral Conference Bochum, Essex/RHUL/Bristol Junior Search and Matching Workshop, Young Economists Seminar at the Dubrovnik Economic Conference, Frankfurt, 2022: Frankfurt, BiGSEM Workshop Bielefeld, 2021: Frankfurt)

While workers climb the job-ladder, they are not only subject to individual worker shocks. Their employing firms might also be hit by shocks, generating two separate effects on the workers. First, the firm shock is changing the firms’ position in the ranking of firms, so that the worker moves up or down the ladder with the firm, without a job change. Besides, both positive and negative firm shocks temporarily increase workers’ search effort and separation risk. This temporary effect is similar to an artificial reduction of tenure. The rungs of the job ladder are thus ’moving and shaky’, generating additional firm and worker dynamics. Taking into account these shocks can explain worker churn at the firm level, and empirical on-the-job search behavior.

(Presented 2022: Frankfurt, 2021: Frankfurt)