Joint work with Petra Moser. 2024.

[Paper] 

We investigate whether changes in the allocation of talent could close the innovation gender gap. Analyzing the biographies of 70,000 scientists -- linked with their patents -- we find that the underrepresentation of women in innovation today is a continuation of a long-run trend that was already in place for scientists born in the 1920s. OLS estimates indicate that the low share of female scientists in patent-intensive STEM fields is the main driver of this innovation gender gap. To identify the causal effects of gender differences in the allocation of talent, we exploit an exogenous shock in female representation due to WWII, when the scarcity of male scientists pulled female scientists into patent-intensive research fields in STEM. Using variation in enlistment as an instrument for female entry, we find that one additional woman becomes an inventor for every five women entering STEM. Counterfactual estimates imply that, if women were as likely to work in STEM fields as men, the innovation gender gap would close in 37, rather than 118 years. Using a three-stage Roy (1951) model to interpret these results, we show that women face distortions in entering science, entering STEM, and in patenting. Due to these distortions, women must be substantially more talented to enter science.

Joint work with Maria Waldinger. 2024. -- new draft coming soon! --

[Paper]

This paper measures the causal effects of long-term exposure to air pollution on individuals. When the Soviet Union - main provider of fossil fuels to socialist East Germany after World War II - unexpectedly cut oil exports in 1982, East Germany had to rapidly substitute oil with highly-polluting lignite coal. We exploit the spatial distribution of lignite deposits within East Germany to show that the resulting increase in air pollution had large and persistent effects on individuals' health and labor market outcomes over the four decades after the shock. We leverage authoritarian restrictions on the freedom of movement and the non-competitive housing and labor markets of the country’s command economy to identify long-term effects in an inverse movers design. Comparing birth cohorts, we show that the adverse effects of long-term air pollution exposure are pervasive throughout the entire age distribution.

Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Public Economics

Joint work with Moritz Hennicke and Lukas Mergele. 2024.

[Paper] 

Departing from communism, East Germany witnessed history’s most extensive privatization program. While the program sparked global interest as a blueprint for economic transformation, its effectiveness remains disputed. Using unique firm-level data, we examine the program’s objective to privatize the most competitive firms. We document that firms with higher baseline productivity are more likely to be privatized, yield higher prices, are more often acquired by West Germans, and are more likely to survive 20 years later. Inspecting the inner workings of the privatization agency, we illustrate challenges and lessons for how governments can design and implement industrial policy goals.

Media coverage: [Süddeutsche Zeitung] [MDR] [WDR] [FOCUS] [Spiegel Online] [LeSoir] [Freie Presse] [Neues Deutschland]
Summaries: [ZEW Kurzexpertise] [ifo Schnelldienst] [Ökonomenstimme]

Joint work with Bettina Peters. (Previous title: Incumbents and Entrants as Carriers of Productivity Growth and Innovation). 2023. 

[Paper]

How does productivity growth change over the firm life cycle? Using pooled survey data from Germany, we study the evolution of firm productivity as an organizational learning process. Differentiating between internal learning through firms’ investments in own research and development and external learning through spillovers, we show that the relationship between learning and productivity growth changes substantially as firms age. While we find that young firms experience larger productivity gains from internal learning – own research and development – on average, their productivity gains are also significantly more volatile. Established firms, in turn, experience lower but more persistent productivity gains from internal learning and are less likely to change their position in the productivity distribution as a consequence of internal learning behavior. External learning through spillovers occurs mostly at established firms.