Max Müller

Uncertainty About Amenities and Job Search | with Antonia Bleser and Simon Cordes

Abstract: Workers value amenities but may lack full information about them before accepting a job. Using worker surveys linked to job postings and reviews of their employers, we show that workers enter jobs informed about only half of the working conditions they will experience. We embed this friction in a job-search model with uncertainty about amenities, in which greater uncertainty exposure discourages search, weakens sorting, and produces downward job-to-job transitions. Consistent with the model, sorting on amenities is about 31 percent weaker where information is one standard deviation worse. Because women place greater value on the hardest-to-observe amenities, they are more exposed to uncertainty and experience more adverse labor market consequences. Our findings suggest that non-wage amenities can reduce aggregate match quality and exacerbate gender inequality through an information channel.

Do Firms Know What Workers Want? | with Simon Cordes

Abstract: Labor supply depends on wages and amenities, and standard models implicitly assume that firms hold accurate beliefs about workers’ amenity valuations. In a survey with firms and workers in Germany linked to administrative data, we measure workers’ valuations of five different amenities and firms’ beliefs about workers’ valuations. We find that firms systematically underestimate workers’ valuations of all five amenities. These misperceptions are driven by interpersonal projection: managers project their own preferences—they value amenities less—onto workers. Through the lens of a simple model of imperfect competition, we show that firm misperceptions result in (i) labor shortages and (ii) excess labor costs for biased firms. Empirical tests confirm these predictions: a simple calibration suggests that non-providing firms could reduce their labor costs by 5% by providing amenities.

Media:  Arbeit.Bildung.Zukunft. Podcast

Award: YEP Best Doctoral Paper Award 2026 

What Do Firms Know About Market Wages? | with Simon Cordes, Gökay Demir and Nathan Lazarus

Abstract: We study firms' beliefs about the wage distribution using a large-scale survey of managers in Germany linked to administrative data. 80% of managers believe their firm pays at least the median wage. Comparing beliefs to administrative wage data, we document pervasive and asymmetric misperceptions: most managers overestimate their firm's relative wage and underestimate their workers' outside options. Beliefs are related to firm outcomes: firms with inaccurate beliefs experience higher separation rates, slower employment growth, and recruit lower-ability workers. The most-biased managers are also the most confident in their beliefs, and providing information about wages does not shift managerial beliefs. Embedding these findings in an equilibrium model, we show that systematic overestimation can lower aggregate wages and worsen the allocation of workers to firms.

Hiring Refugees as Apprentices: The Role of Skills, Signals, and Policy Interventions | with Christina Felfe, Lukas Kagerbauer,  Christoph Sajons, Judith Saurer, and Thomas Zwick 

Abstract: Do refugees face systematic disadvantages in the apprenticeship market and what measures can mitigate them? We address these questions using a combination of discrete choice experiments and information treatments involving 800 firms in Germany. Our findings show that refugees are much less likely to be accepted for apprenticeships than their native counterparts, unless they are substantially better qualified in terms of formal education. However, this gap can be significantly reduced through two key mechanisms: signaling soft skills such as discipline, motivation, and reliability, and implementing public policy programs that enhance job-specific language proficiency and job readiness.

Media: BILD,  Staatsanzeiger, Lebensmittelzeitung