Children’s impact on maternal employment under the shadow of state socialism: Evidence from East and West Germany (with J. Köckeis), November 2024.
This article estimates the causal effect of fertility on female employment outcomes using German administrative tax data from 2018. By comparing East and West Germany, our paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between motherhood and maternal labor supply in post-communist countries. To address the problem of endogeneity of fertility, we use twin births as an exogenous variation for family size. Our results suggest a negative relationship between the number of children and maternal employment outcomes. However, this connection is significantly stronger in West Germany for the second and third child than in East Germany. By the fourth child, the effects in the two parts of the country become more similar. Further analyses suggest that these differences can be explained in particular by regional institutional conditions, such as the availability of public childcare facilities. In addition, these differences can also be attributed to the attitudes towards working mothers of people in the immediate vicinity.
Wirtschafts- und Politikberatung mit der Lohn- und Einkommensteuerstatistik 2020 – Coronabedingter Korrekturbedarf infolge vermehrter Zahlungen von Kurzarbeitergeld (with M. Teuber, J. Wilhelm and J. Herrmann), December 2024.
This article presents an approach to correct for covid induced short-time allowances recorded in the administrative tax data for 2020. The aim is to obtain a data set that is representative for the years after the covid pandemic so that it can be used for analyses in future years. For this purpose, at the level of the individual taxpayer, recipients of covid induced short-time allowances are identified. Wages replaced by these allowances are calculated and added to earned income. Finally, adjustments to declared income-related expenses are made.