Current Research
You can find information on my current research by topic below. If you are interested in one of the projects - or my research generally -, drop me an email (michael.oberfichtner@iab.de) and let's start a conversation!
Monopsonistic labour markets
In several projects, I examine to understand the causes, extent and consequences of employers' market power. Current projects are:
The wage elasticity of recruitment, IZA Discussion Paper 15675, 2022 (with B. Hirsch, E. Jahn and A. Manning)
We propose a new approach to estimate the wage elasticity of the flow of recruits to the firm based on the AKM wage decomposition and implement using date for the labour market region of Hamburg, Germany.The pass-through of monopsony power to wages (with B. Hirsch, E. Jahn and A. Manning)
We aim to estimate the pass-through of monopsony power to wages paid to workers and thus whether potential monopsony power indeed translates into wages.
Gender and Family Economics
My research on gender and family economics focuses more and more on investigating parenthood and leave from the firms' perspective. Current projects are:
Parental Leave, Worker Substitutability, and Firm’s Employment, 2024. Updated version available at https://docs.iza.org/dp16843.pdf (with M. Huebener, J. Jessen, and D. Kuehnle; earlier version “A Firm-Side Perspective on Parental Leave”) [reject & resubmit, Economic Journal]]
Policy evaluation using field experiments
I ran several field experiments in the past and more is on the way! Current projects are:
Do Caseworker Meetings Prevent Unemployment? Evidence from a Field Experiment. IZA Discussion Paper 16293, 2024 (with P. Homrighausen);
Voluntary unemployment insurance for the self-employed (with G. van den Berg, E. Jahn, G. Stephan, and A. Uhlendorff)