“Multiproduct Firms, Horizontal Mergers, and International Trade,” (with Jackie M.L. Chan and Michael Irlacher) Forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics, https://doi.org/10.1162/rest.a.255
“Artificial Intelligence, Tasks, Skills and Wages: Worker-Level Evidence from Germany,” (with Erik Engberg, Magnus Lodefalk and Sarah Schroeder) Research Policy Volume 54, Issue 8, October 2025, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2025.105285
“Measuring the Technological Bias of Robot Adoption and its Implications for the Aggregate Labor Share,” (with Ilya Manuylov) Research Policy Volume 52, Issue 9, November 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2023.104848
“Robots and Firms,” (with Ilya Manuylov and Marcel Smolka) The Economic Journal Volume 131, Issue 638, August 2021, Pages 2553–2584. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueab009 Winner of the 2021 Royal Economic Society Prize
"Working from Home, Wages, and Regional Inequality in the Light of COVID-19," (with Michael Irlacher) The Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik) vol. 241, no. 3, 2021, pp. 373-404. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbnst-2020-0030
“Offshoring and Non-monotonic Employment Effects across Industries in General Equilibrium,” (with Daniel Baumgarten and Michael Irlacher) European Economic Review, 2020, 130: 103583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2020.103583
“Offshoring and firm overlap: Welfare effects with non‐sharp selection into offshoring,” (with Stella Capuano, Hartmut Egger and Hans‐Jörg Schmerer) Review of International Economics, 2020, 28: 138 – 167. https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12445
“Foreign Ownership and Skill-biased Technological Change,” (with Marcel Smolka) Journal of International Economics, 2019, 118, 94-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2019.01.017
“Skills, tasks and the scarcity of talent in a global economy,” Review of International Economics, 2016, 24(3), 536-563. https://doi.org/10.1111/roie.12222
“Labour unions and multi‐product firms in closed and open economies,” (with Hartmut Egger) Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, 2012, 45(4), 1456-1479. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2012.01745.x
Wage Setting in Multi-Product Firms (with Jackie M.L. Chan, Michael Irlacher and Luca Macedoni) CESifo, Munich, 2025 Working Paper No. 11674 [Link]
Recent research documents a substantial shift in production distribution towards “superstar firms”, characterized by high market power in both product and labor markets, which helps to explain the decline in labor share of income in most developed countries. This paper contributes by investigating a new, so far unexplored determinant of markdowns at the firm level, namely the number of products a firm produces, or its scope. Using rich matched employer-employee data on Danish manufacturing firms, we document a negative elasticity between wages and firm scope, which is of similar magnitude, but different sign, as the firm-size wage premium. We then rationalize this novel empirical result in a theoretical model where the multi-product nature of a firm is an amenity to workers due to internal job rotation. Hence, firms with a larger scope exercise greater monopsony power and offer lower wages. In a final step to our analysis, we use our estimates to quantify the role of multi-product firms in explaining the decline in the labor hare. Our finding has significant implications for understanding labor market dynamics in times of rising concentration on large multi-product producers.
Shocks to Firm Organization: The Case of Foreign Acquisitions (with Luca Macedoni and Angelina Odintsova) CESifo, Munich, 2024 Working Paper No. 11525 [Link]
This paper studies how foreign acquisitions affect firms’ internal labor organization, particularly occupational switching. This focus is inspired by new stylized facts we document using linked employer-employee data from Denmark: while the total number of occupations and hierarchical layers in firms remains stable, a significant share of firms simultaneously add and drop occupations and layers each year. Applying a dynamic two-way fixed effects matching estimator, we find that foreign acquisitions lead to significant reorganization within firms: though the number of layers or occupations remains unchanged, firms exhibit substantial occupational churning among existing workers, especially among higher-paid employees.
Intermediates Trade and Knowledge Flows (with Antonella Nocco) CESifo, Munich, 2025 Working Paper No. 117815 [Link]
This paper introduces a novel mechanism, emphasizing the potential for firms to achieve cost savings through participation in buyer networks. Initially, we utilize register-based data from Denmark to devise a unique firm-specific buyer network measure, which relies on firms’ industrial input structures and imports. Our analysis reveals a negative impact of this network proxy on firms’ input demand. Subsequently, we develop a trade model incorporating vertical linkages and introduce network effects that result in savings in intermediate costs. Our theory posits that the magnitude of these savings may be associated with the effectiveness of knowledge transmission among network participants. Consequently, firms operating in regions with efficient knowledge transmission networks may realize greater savings in intermediate input costs, leading to increased profits from local and export sales. Furthermore, we provide empirical evidence supporting our theoretical predictions by demonstrating the positive impact of networks based on relationship-specific products on firm revenues. Overall, our paper underscores the significance of industrial policies aimed at reducing the costs of local production networks, thereby enhancing the efficiency of knowledge transmission among firms. This, in turn, has positive implications for firms’ competitiveness and employment stability.
The Implications of the Interplay between Global Value Chains and Technology for Labour Productivity and Demand (with Sotiris Blanas, Phu Huynh and Christian Viegelahn), Working Paper 2025 [Link]
Leveraging a new sample of 35 industries covering the entire economies of 62 developed and developing countries in 2000--2019, we derive a broad set of insights about the implications of Global Value Chains (GVCs) and their interplay with technology for labour productivity and demand. Participation in GVCs through linkages with suppliers (i.e., backward) and buyers (i.e., forward) increased labour productivity of industries, but the productivity gains from backward participation operated through larger employment losses than output losses, while productivity gains from forward participation operated through output gains or employment losses. Also, GVC participation, especially through backward linkages, was skill-biased, having increased the employment share of workers in high-skilled occupations and decreased the employment shares of young and female workers. By distinguishing between high- and lower-income countries and taking advantage of initial cross-industry differences in the intensities of utilisation of CT, IT, software, and industrial robots, we obtain additional evidence pointing to the critical role of the interplay between GVCs and technology for labour productivity and demand.
Firm-Level Robot Adoption and Labor Cost Behavior (with Johannes Voshaar and Thomas R. Loy), Working Paper, 2024 [Link]
This study examines the effect of firm-level adoption of industrial robots on labor cost adjustments using a unique data set of Spanish manufacturing firms. Our results suggest that robot-adopting firms exhibit greater labor cost stickiness than non-adopters. Robot adoption leads to a greater demand for high-skilled workers to perform complementary and complex tasks (i.e., upskilling). As skilled labor is associated with higher labor adjustment costs, managers seem less willing to adjust labor resources during downturns. A difference-in-differences analysis using the Spanish labor reform of 2010 as a quasi-natural experiment reveals even more amplified labor cost stickiness of robot-adopting firms in the post-reform period. While the overall labor market was greatly deregulated, the “war for talent” for high-skilled workers seems even more pronounced for robot-adopting firms. Our findings go contrary to the widespread notion that robots are "stealing" human jobs.
Tasks, Occupations, and Wage Inequality in an Open Economy (with Sascha O. Becker, Hartmut Egger and Marc-Andreas Muendler)
This project documents and theoretically explains a nexus between globalization and residual wage inequality through internal labor market reorganization. Combining time-varying within-occupation task information from representative German labor force surveys with linked plant-worker data for Germany, we establish three interrelated facts: (1) larger plants and exporters organize production into more occupations, and (2) workers at larger plants and exporters perform fewer tasks within occupations, while (3) overall and residual wages are more dispersed at larger plants. To explain these facts, we build a model in which the plant endogenously bundles tasks into occupations and workers match to occupations. By splitting the task range into more occupations, the plant can assign workers to a narrower task range per occupation, reducing worker mismatch and raising worker efficiency as well as the within-plant dispersion of wages. Embedding this rationale into a Melitz (Econometrica 2003) model, where fixed span-of-control costs increase with occupation counts, we show that inherently more productive (exporter) plants exhibit higher worker efficiency and wider wage dispersion and that economy-wide wage inequality is higher in the open economy for an empirically confirmed parametrization. Estimation of our model shows that a worker's average number of tasks is inversely related to plant revenues and that the within-plant wage dispersion is positively related to plant size. We aim to implement a structural estimation of key model parameters in order to quantify the effects of trade on the specific form on inequality considered in this research paper and to facilitate a counterfactual analysis that provides insights on whether the opening up of China has contributed to increasing wage inequality in Germany.
Globalization, Migration, and the Spatial Organization of Production (with Jackie M.L. Chan and Lin Ma)
In this paper, we study the distributional impacts of external shocks from international trade theoretically and empirically, focusing on the spatial dimension and the internal geographic mobility of workers and firms. Previous research has shown that the adverse effects of import competition vary across regions due to their specialization in different industries. However, the spatial organization of production may evolve as workers and firms relocate between regions in response to trade shocks. To understand these consequences, we develop a rich quantitative framework of spatial production with migration frictions in general equilibrium. In our multiregion multi-sector model, individuals have heterogeneous preferences for locations and sectors. They choose to be either workers or entrepreneurs in a specific sector, and face migration frictions when moving between regions. The firms that entrepreneurs operate face a tradeoff between agglomeration externalities and high factor costs in large cities. For our empirical analysis, we rely on rich Danish register-based data. We exploit the rise in import competition from China and Central and Eastern European countries faced by Danish manufacturers between 1999 and 2007. Regression analysis demonstrates that import exposure leads to the out-migration of workers in regions within Denmark. The model is then structurally estimated by targeting key moments in the data. Our quantitative results show that import shocks lead to the concentration of employment in large cities and a rise in income inequality of mid-sized cities. Our findings suggest that large cities serve as safe havens for workers when facing import shocks.
Global Value Chains, Self-Employment, and Informal Work (with Sotiris Blanas, Phu Huynh and Christian Viegelahn)
Impact of Brexit on Trade in Goods and Services (with Holger Görg and Saskia Meuchelböck)
"Artificial Intelligence and Worker Stress: Evidence from Germany" (with Magnus Lodefalk) DISO 4, 5 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44206-025-00160-3
“Domestic and Foreign Acquisitions, Plant Survival and Employment Effects,” (with Roger Bandick) Applied Economics Letters Volume 30, Number 7, Pages 923-926, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2022.2030033
"Trade, Labor Markets and the Organization of Production within Firms." Doctoral thesis, 2013, University of Bayreuth, Faculty of Law, Business and Economics. https://epub.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/94/1/Diss_MK.pdf