Lifting Barriers to Skill Transferability: Immigrants’ Integration through Occupational Recognition with Silke Anger and Jacopo Bassetto

We study the effects of improving skill transferability on immigrants’ labor market integration exploiting a unique reform in Germany. The reform alleviated barriers to occupational recognition for non-EU immigrants. Combining administrative and survey data in a difference-in-differences design, we show that post-reform the share of non-EU immigrants with recognized qualifications increased by 15 percent. Consequently, non-EU employment and wages in regulated occupations (e.g., doctors) increased respectively by 18.6 and 4 percent, narrowing the gaps with EU immigrants. Despite the inflow of non-EU immigrants in these occupations, we find no evidence of crowding out or downward wage pressure for natives.

Reducing the Child Penalty by Incentivizing Part-Time Work? with Laurenz Bärtsch

Worldwide governments discuss how to increase maternal labor market participation and to reduce the child penalty after birth. This study analyses a German paid parental leave reform, which aims to increase maternal labour market participation and to reduce the child penalty by financially incentivising maternal part-time work during the two years following child birth. Using German social security records, we exploit the fact that only mothers whose child is born in or after July 2015 are eligible for the new part-time PL option in a Difference-in-Differences strategy. We find that the policy increased the probability that high income mothers return to work during the first year after child birth by 3pp (≈ 15%). However, the policy does not impact maternal employment along the intensive margin (part-time or full-time work) in the long run, leaving maternal labor market participation and the child penalty unaffected.

The Early Career Gender Wage Gap among University Graduates with Ipek Yükselen (Revise & Resubmit)

A large literature has shown that the gender wage gap is small in the beginning of the career and increases gradually with age, mostly because of family decisions, i.e., a penalty caused by child birth. Using a unique dataset that links university graduates with detailed employment records from the German social security register, we find that a significant gender wage gap already exists in the first job after graduation before most young individuals make family decisions. However, the gender wage gap decreases in the first year after the labor market entry before slowly increasing over time. As an explanation for the decrease of the gender wage gap, we find that female graduates have higher returns to firm and occupation changes than their male counterparts. Specifically, women may use firm and occupation changes to correct for a skill mismatch, which is more common for women than men in the first job.

Helping High-School Students in Choosing their Career: Experimental Evidence from a Large-Scale School Policy with Silke Anger, Sarah Bernhard, Hans Dietrich, Adrian Lerche, Alexander Patzina, Carina Toussaint  AEA RCT Registry AEARCTR-0004587

A Library in the Palm of your Hand? Inequalities in Reading Literacy and Educational Attainment with Silke Anger, Bernhard Christoph, Agata Galkiewicz, Shushanik Margaryan, Frauke Peter, Thomas Siedler AEA RCT Registry AEARCTR-0008561

The Effect of Early Home Visiting on Maternal and Child Mental Health at Primary School Age with Gabriella Conti and Sören Kliem 

Student Job Coworker Networks and Labor Market Entry with Gökay Demir, Friederike Hertweck, Ipek Yükselen