Peer-Reviewed Publications: 

How perceptions of bone marrow donation costs affect donation behavior: Survey evidence from a large donor registry. Michael Haylock, Patrick Kampkötter, Mario Macis, Susanne Seitz, Robert Slonim, Daniel Wiesen, Alexander H. Schmidt.
European Journal of Health Economics. Published Version
Abstract: Over the past three decades, advancements in collection methods for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation substantially reduced invasiveness and safety concerns. To what extent, however, registered donors are informed about extraction methods and how their beliefs drive their willingness to follow through with a donation is not well understood. Inaccurate beliefs about extraction methods may cause donors to overestimate their perceived cost, potentially reducing donations. In a survey with about 24,000 potential donors in Germany’s largest stem-cell registry, we investigate how beliefs about extraction methods affect potential donors’ willingness to follow through with a stem cell donation. We find widespread misconceptions about extraction methods, with many donors attributing a significant fraction of stem cell extractions to be coming from never-used methods. Importantly, a lack of knowledge and misconceptions about extraction methods persist among registered donors, often anchored to methods that prevailed at the time of registration. Exploring the link between donors’ beliefs and their (stated) willingness to donate, we find that accurate beliefs about lower extraction costs correlate with a 2.2–2.9 percentage points higher willingness to donate, representing a 40% reduction in donor unavailability. Our results highlight the need for informational campaigns to correct donors’ misconceptions and potentially save more lives among blood cancer patients. 

Reducing Registry Members' Attrition When Invited to Donate: Evidence From a Large Stem Cell Registry. In press. Michael Haylock, Patrick Kampkötter, Daniel Wiesen, Robert Slonim, Mario Macis, Susanne Seitz, Jürgen Sauter, Alexander H. Schmidt. American Journal of Health Economics. Accepted version
Abstract: Attrition of stem-cell donors at the confirmatory typing (CT) stage non-trivially reduces the supply of life-saving stem-cell transplants. Using data from DKMS Germany, a major stem-cell donor registry, we study a set of initiatives that collected donors' genetic information or periods of temporary unavailability meant to enhance operating efficiency and registry members' ultimate availability to donate. We analyzed 91,670 confirmatory typing requests to registry members for whom a matching patient was found. We find that initiatives are robustly associated with lower attrition through both sorting and behavioral channels. Our preferred estimates indicate that the initiatives are associated with between 4.0 and 8.5 percentage-point lower attrition, corresponding to 17.5% to 37.1% reduced unavailability to donate. Moreover, the decision of donors to engage in an initiative is predictive of their propensity for attrition at the CT stage. We discuss implications for stem-cell registries in terms of operational efficiency, notably their ability to use participation in the initiatives as a signal of higher eventual availability to donate, as well as costs and benefits.

Offline volunteering during COVID-19: A survey experiment with prior and prospective blood donors. 2024. Stefanie Ehmann, Michael Haylock, Anne Heynold. Journal of the Economic Science Association. Published version
Abstract: Offline volunteering was faced with new challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a survey experiment with 1,207 student participants, we test the impact of informing subjects about blood donation urgency (shortage information), and secondly, the effect of providing information about measures taken to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission at blood donation centers (hygiene information), on their inclination to donate during and after the COVID-19 lockdown. The results show that shortage information increases extensive-margin willingness to donate for non-donors by 15 percentage points (pp), on average, and increases the willingness to donate quickly for all respondents. Hygiene information, however, reduces prior donors' intention to donate again by 8pp, on average, and reduces the willingness of non-donors to donate quickly.
The replication material for the study is available at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/4yt79j7nbm/1

Distributional Differences in the Time Horizon of Executive Compensation. 2022. Empirical Economics. Published version
Abstract: The aim of executive compensation plans is to incentivize executives to maximize long-term firm value. Past research shows that executives’ pay is determined by short-term stock performance to a substantial degree. This paper tests for distributional differences in the time horizon of the performance–pay relation, controlling for executive-firm fixed effects in a quantile regression framework. I identify short-term and long-term firm and industry performance using a filter and estimate distributional differences in the short-term and long-term performance–pay relation using method of moments–quantile regression (Machado and Santos Silva in J Econ 213:145–173, 2019). I find the right tail of the conditional total compensation distribution has a more long-term-oriented performance–pay relation than the left tail. By contrast, the right tail of the conditional accumulated wealth distribution has more short-term-oriented performance–pay relation than the left tail. Results show that asymmetry in short-term firm performance–pay relations may exist, but do not vary across the conditional distribution. 

Heterogeneity in firms’ recruitment practices: New evidence from representative employer data. 2022. German Journal of Human Resources Management. Tobias Brändle, Phillip Grunau, Michael Haylock, and Patrick Kampkötter. Published version
Abstract: The hiring and recruitment process is one of the main challenges to the success of companies and a significant driver of total labor costs. We use representative employer data for German private-sector establishments with at least 50 employees to explore recent developments in employer search, selection, and screening activities over the years of 2012–2018. We document changes in hiring policies over time and address heterogeneity across establishments related to size, ownership, and industry sector. Our results show that although establishment characteristics are correlated with different facets of hiring behavior, there is no homogeneous pattern for employer search and selection instruments. We highlight differences of hiring practices targeted at managerial versus non-managerial new hires. Finally, we outline potential mechanisms and research gaps for future work and discuss managerial implications. 

The Role of Preferences, Attitudes, and Personality Traits in Labor Market Matching.  2019. Economics Letters. Michael Haylock, Patrick Kampkötter. Published version
Abstract: We provide new evidence of worker–firm matching based on preferences, attitudes and personality traits using new, representative matched employer–employee data from Germany. Time-constant firm characteristics explain a significant proportion of total variance in a series of outcome variables commonly applied in behavioral economics research. Hence, behavioral characteristics play an important, yet under researched, role in the labor market matching process. 

Other Publications
Dataset: The Linked Personnel Panel (LPP) (2019). Data in brief.