Abstract: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide the first comprehensive investigation of the relationship between workplace co-determination in the form of works councils and income satisfaction. Controlling for a wide range of individual, job-related, and firm-level characteristics in OLS and fixed effects specifications, we observe that employees working in establishments with a works council report significantly higher income satisfaction compared to their counterparts in non-co-determined firms. The rank in the income distribution, the perceived fairness of the wage, and working conditions emerge as quantitatively relevant factors in explaining the positive correlation.

Presented at: GLO-JOPE Bonn Conference (December 2025), EWMES (December 2025)

Abstract: We present the first empirical evidence on the impact of school-starting age on educational mismatch. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we exploit exogenous variation in school entry laws and apply a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to estimate causal effects. Our findings indicate that one additional month in school-starting age reduces the likelihood of undereducation by 1.1 percentage points, while no consistent effect emerges for overeducation. Initial evidence suggests that these effects might be driven by occupational choice, as younger school starters are more likely to work in high-skill occupations. Conversely, educational attainment might act as a suppressor, amplifying the reduction in undereducation while uncovering a latent positive link between school-starting age and overeducation. Our results underscore the complex role of institutional factors, such as school-entry policies, in shaping educational and labour market outcomes.

Presented at: LABORatorio R. Revelli Workshop (November 2023), ESPE (June 2024), SOEP User Conference (July 2024), EEA-ESEM (August 2024), AIEL (October 2024), RES (June 2025)

Abstract: Television is a major spare-time activity with the potential to lower economic activity but also to manipulate behavior by changing preferences and social norms through role models. To provide a comprehensive investigation into the impacts of television on the labor market, we study two natural experiments providing variation in access to television broadcasts. First, we leverage a setting in West Germany, where individuals in some regions could watch commercial television via terrestrial frequencies while others could only watch public TV. By analyzing rich panel data, we provide evidence inconsistent with the notion of negative impacts on labor market outcomes. Instead, we find positive effects on the labor supply among females. This employment premium has limited monetary consequences for females, which could be due to gender-specific occupational choices. To better understand the mechanisms and to examine long-run effects, we exploit a setting in East Germany, where for decades, citizens in most areas had access to Western public TV with its emphasis on conservative and family-oriented values, except for those areas where only state-run socialist television with a focus on full employment was available. By analyzing several datasets, we provide evidence on the beliefs of East Germans about the role of women in the labor market, which could explain the persistent effects of TV on the female labor supply and gender equality in labor market participation. It appears that Eastern socialist TV shares a surprising similarity with today’s dominant form of Western free-market TV: they both encourage women to work.

Presented at: ESPE (June 2022), Asian Meeting of the ES (June 2022),  SOEP User Conference (July 2022), Asian Meeting of the ES in East and South-East Asia (August 2022), EALE (September 2022), VfS (September 2022), CESifo Area Conference on the Economics of Digitization (November 2022), ASSA (January 2023), SOLE (May 2023), EEA-ESEM Congress (August 2023)