Research agenda:

Unemployment Insurance and Family Labor Supply (Job Market Paper)                      Draft coming soon!

Abstract: Governments spend heavily on unemployment insurance (UI), yet research on UI entitlement length focuses almost entirely on the claimant's own job search. This paper asks whether the rest of the family adjusts its labor supply when an unemployed member is granted a longer UI entitlement. The classic added worker effect shows that wives work more when husbands lose their jobs, but whether UI entitlement length shapes such employment responses, and whether they extend beyond spouses to parents and adult children, is unstudied. The net effect is theoretically ambiguous, as shown in this paper's model. Using administrative data from the Netherlands, I exploit sharp discontinuities in maximum UI entitlement duration in a regression discontinuity design. Longer entitlement raises actual benefit duration and delays exits from unemployment. In response, spouses and adult children raise their employment while parents do not, with spouses responding from the start of the spell and adult children near benefit expiration. A household search model rationalizes the sign, timing, and heterogeneity of these responses. This paper provides the first direct evidence on UI entitlement spillovers within couples and, more importantly, the first evidence that they run across generations. 

Part-time Work Policies and Older Workers’ Employment: Evidence from German Mini-jobs    Draft coming soon!

Abstract: This paper studies how part-time work policies shape bridge employment and retirement transitions among older workers, using the 2003 German Mini-job reform as a natural experiment. The reform raised the Mini-job earnings threshold from 325 to 400 Euros per month and abolished the maximum weekly hours requirement. Exploiting variation in the age at which different birth cohorts were exposed to the reform, I implement a cohort difference-in-differences design using unique administrative data from the German Pension Fund. Rather than reducing unemployment or extending working lives as intended, the reform induced older workers to switch from regular to marginal employment without social security contributions, increasing marginal employment by 1.2 percentage points, and accelerated full pension claiming. The evidence points to older workers' preferences for flexible working arrangements, rather than financial incentives alone, as an important driver of these responses. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the transition to marginal employment was driven primarily by women and low-attachment workers, while reductions in unemployment were concentrated among low-income older workers. These findings suggest that part-time work policies may inadvertently accelerate labor market exit among older workers rather than prolong their participation.

The Effect of Mandatory Breaks on Female Labor Supply  (jointly with Michele Tertilt and Sena Coskun)