Research

Publications in Refereed Journals 

Huber, K. & Winkler, E. (2019), All You Need is Love? Trade Shocks, Inequality, and Risk Sharing between Partners, European Economic Review, 111, 305-335. Link to publication

Abstract A large literature suggests that growing international trade is among the drivers of rising labor earnings inequality within countries. We contribute to this literature by studying the distributional effects of Germany’s trade integration with China and Eastern Europe. We provide evidence that the trade shock explains 5–18% of the rise in earnings inequality between individual workers. However, when we take risk sharing between partners into account, we find that the inequality-increasing effect of the trade shock is up to 42% lower. Our results therefore suggest that a pure worker-level perspective which ignores risk sharing might give an incomplete picture of the distributional effects of international trade.

Huber, K. (2019), Changes in Parental Leave and Young Children’s Non-Cognitive Skills, Review of Economics of the Household, 17(1), 89-119. Link to publication

Abstract This study examines the effect of substantial changes in parental leave regulations on the non-cognitive development of children aged between 0 and 3 years. I exploit a large and unanticipated parental leave reform in Germany as a natural experiment. Since the first of January 2007, the replacement of a means-tested by an earnings-related system led to a gain in benefits for wealthier families whereas needier parents receive a lower overall benefit amount than before the reform. I detect a significant negative effect of this change in the parental leave system on the socio-emotional development of newborns and it turns out that children from loser-families drive this effect. The parental leave reform does not have a significant impact on 2–3-year-olds’ skills and development on average and the difference between children from losers and winners does also not persist in the longer run. I only find suggestive evidence that an increase in benefits improves some skills of 2–3-year-olds if compared to those who experience reductions in benefits.

Working Papers

Public Child Care and Mothers' Career Trajectories, IZA DP No. 16433 (joint with Geske Rolvering). Link to latest version , earlier version available as CEPA DP No. 64.

Abstract We study the impact of public child care on mothers’ career trajectories, focusing on qualitative dimensions of career choices. Using an event study approach, we find that child care helps mothers to return to the labor market more quickly and that this effect is mainly due to an increase in part-time employment. At the same time, we find no short- or long- term effects of child care on the quality of maternal careers, as measured, for example, by employment stability, employment in occupations with abstract tasks, or employment in managerial positions. Furthermore, we find no evidence of heterogeneous effects across mothers.

Media Coverage: idw, Digitales Forschungsmagazin University of Passau, Bildungsklick.

The role of intergroup contacts at work - individual level evidence on the contact hypothesis, mimeo. [Status: draft coming soon]

Abstract This paper investigates the causal effect of individuals' contact to migrants at the workplace on individual-level party and voting preferences as well as on interest in politics and political participation. Using a shift share instrument based on the initial distribution of migrants between firms and a large influx of migrants to Germany in the years around the refugee crisis in 2015, we do not find strong evidence in favor of or against the contact hypothesis developed by Allport et al. (1954), i.e. a higher share of migrants at the workplace does not significantly affect individuals' party preferences in any direction. We however show that a higher share of migrant co-workers tends to shift individuals' political attitudes more towards the right end of the political scale and that there is a significant positive effect on the probability that workers participate in political activities at least once a month. With this individual-level evidence on the contact hypothesis, we complement the rather inconclusive literature investigating regional level exposure to migrants and local voting outcomes.

Reporting Bias of Survey Wages: Sources, Channels, and Economic Consequences, mimeo.  [Status: work in progress] (joint with Marco Caliendo, Ingo Isphording & Jakob Wegmann)

Selected other ongoing projects

Physical attractiveness, firm sorting and the gender wage gap (with Erwin Winkler).

The Added Worker Effect: the role of norms (with Erwin Winkler).