Skilled labor shortages are a pressing economic challenge for many advanced economies. A

potential solution is to recruit talent from abroad through skilled immigration. Exploiting the

German introduction of the EU Blue Card in 2012 as a quasi-experimental policy shock to

the availability of skilled labor, we are first to analyze its differentiated impact on employment

and young firm performance. Our results show that young firms with non-EU founders benefit

disproportionately from the increased skilled-labor supply. In this context, we do not find evidence

of skilled immigrants crowding out native skilled workers. We further identify the mechanisms

driving our results and find evidence of pre-existing labor market frictions such as discrimination,

cultural barriers, and limited networks.

The climate crisis presses policymakers, communities, individuals, and businesses to implement eco-friendly behavior. However, drivers of businesses’ enhanced environmental performance remain understudied. In a sample of 11,665 German firms between 2006 and 2021, I investigate the effect of ownership change on environmental performance and justice. I find that target firms increase their process and product innovations to improve their CO2 emissions and recycling. This effect is stronger for small and less innovative firms and does not persist for firms in disadvantaged regions with lower socioeconomic status. For practitioners and policymakers, my results show that regulations that directly or indirectly limit asset sales can have far-reaching

sustainability effects.

Prior research links personality to innovative behavior. However, founder personality may also shape the teams they build — redirecting its effect on firm-level innovation in unexpected ways. In a representative sample of 2,169 young German firms between 2011 and 2022, our results reveal that founder personality affects founding team diversity and firm innovation. Openness to new experiences and agreeableness have a significantly positive influence on innovation input and output, whereas conscientiousness has a negative effect. Agreeable and extraverted founders tend to assemble less diverse teams, whereas conscientious founders assemble more diverse teams. Team diversity partially mediates the relationship between personality and innovation and frequently opposes its direct effect. Our findings suggest that a multi-level perspective — accounting for both founder personality and founding team composition — deepens our understanding of firm innovation. Deliberately assembling diverse founding teams can counteract personality-driven biases in preferences for team diversity and unlock innovation potential that would otherwise be suppressed.

Seven European countries have implemented mandatory board gender quotas in the last two decades. I examine how this exogenous shock to the board of directors in publicly-listed firms impacts board- and firm-level outcomes. My analysis is the first to exploit the scattered implementation of these seven European quotas between 2008 and 2019, using a staggered difference-in-differences design. I document an economically meaningful decrease in firm performance and monitoring quality, measured by the level of earnings management. Evidence from moderation analyses show that the negative quota effect on performance is stronger in firms with higher ex-ante monitoring quality. My results suggest that imposing restrictions on specific board attributes can produce inefficient board structures and negative real effects.

Pay to burn industrial waste, not to landfill, recycle, or burn hazardous or municipal waste — the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) prices carbon unevenly across waste treatment routes. Using facility-level data from the Industrial Emissions Portal and country-level data from Eurostat, I study how a rise in carbon prices shifts waste management away from EU ETS-covered combustion. A €10/tCO2 increase in the carbon price reduces non-hazardous waste incineration by 11\%. Waste disposal significantly diminishes in countries with limited landfill options. The carbon price has stalled the decline in landfills and the rise in energy recovery. An unbalanced carbon price risks pushing waste back down the treatment hierarchy.

I study the labor market and migratory effects of coal phase-outs.