Helping low-skilled students transition from school to work - Evidence from a large-scale program in Germany
Abstract: Using administrative data, I examine the expansion of a large-scale school-to-work transition program using a difference-in-differences design. By comparing treated regions to regions that would have been treated if treatment allocation had been at a more granular regional level, I find that the program had no effect on education and early career outcomes. I discuss several possible reasons why the program was not successful and finally conclude that the expansion did not produce welfare gains.
Minimum Wages and Teenagers’ Educational Plans (with Silke Anger and Max Kunaschk)
Abstract: This paper exploits the introduction of the German statutory minimum wage to analyze the causal effects of minimum wages on educational plans of teenagers. Using detailed panel survey data in a difference-in-differences design, we find that in low-wage regions the reform increased the share of teenagers who aim for more than a basic school degree, despite their exemption from the minimum wage law. This effect is driven by forward-looking behavior of low-skilled teenagers who are most likely affected by the minimum wage upon labor market entrance, and therefore compensate for lower employment prospects by increasing investments in human capital.
Revisiting the gender-specific training gap of part- and full-time workers (with Simon Janssen and Oliver Wölfel)
Abstract: We study the gender-specific effects of part-time work on further training. We find a large and persistent part-time training gap for women that remains persistent even if we account for unobserved heterogeneity. For men, we find an even larger unconditional part-time training gap. However, if we account for unobserved heterogeneity the part-time training gap entirely disappears suggesting that negative selection of low productive men in part-time jobs explains the training gap for men. Our results are consistent with a simple identity-based framework in which individuals receive identity-based payoffs (costs) by following (violating) their stereotype gender role model.
Early-stage projects
Endogeneous acquisition of job information of teenagers
Early school enrollment and long-term labor market outcomes