This paper presents a life-cycle model with human capital investment during working life through training and provides a novel empirical test of human capital theory. We exploit a sizable pension reform across adjacent cohorts in a regression discontinuity setting and find that an increase in working life increases training. We discuss and test further predictions regarding the relation between initial ...
Research on the consequences of starting in overeducation often focuses on either secondary or tertiary graduates. We focus on both within one country, Germany. While matching and search models imply the improvement of initial overeducation, human capital theory and stigma associated with overeducation predict entrapment. The strongly skill- and occupation-based labour market for the vocationally trained ...
I assert that air pollution from nitrogen oxides affects the productivity of employees in Mexican court hearings. This is the first article analyzing this connection and the first to disentangle work-breaks from the productivity of white-collar workers. I merge hourly pollution with granular hearing data under the assumption that the length of the hearing approximates productivity and identify causality ...
Die Bildungsabschlüsse von MigrantInnen werden typischerweise anhand der im Zielland geltenden Standards eingeordnet. Weniger Beachtung findet dagegen die Stellung, die diese Qualifikationen im jeweiligen Herkunftsland haben. In diesem Beitrag wird die mitgebrachte Bildung verschiedener Gruppen von Zugewanderten mit den Bildungsverteilungen des jeweiligen Herkunftslands und mit der Bildungsverteilung ...
Understanding the causes of the slowdown in aggregate productivity growth is key to maintaining the competitiveness of advanced economies and ensuring long-term economic prosperity. This paper is the first to provide evidence that investment in Knowledge-Based Capital (KBC), despite having a positive effect on productivity at the micro level, is a driver of the weak productivity performance at the ...
We analyze self-selection of refugees and irregular migrants and test our theory in the context of the European refugee crisis. Using unique datasets from the International Organization for Migration and Gallup World Polls, we provide the first large-scale evidence on reasons to emigrate, and the self-selection and sorting of refugees and irregular migrants. Refugees and female irregular migrants are ...
The superstar firms model provides a compelling explanation for two simultaneously occurring phenomena: the rise of concentration in industries and the fall of labor shares. Our empirical analysis confirms two of the underlying assumptions of the model: the market share increases and the labor share decreases with increasing firm-level total factor productivity, providing support for the superstar ...
This workshop brings together high profile junior researchers from leading universities in Europe and the US, who present recent work on the nexus of firms and productivity in developing economies. The workshop is jointly organized by researchers from the DIW and the University of Munich (LMU). Attendance by invitation!
In Deutschland und Europa hat die Wirtschaftstätigkeit des Staates infolge von Privatisierungen und der Liberalisierung über Jahrzehnte abgenommen. In den letzten Jahren lässt sich beobachten, dass Kommunen die Energie- und Wasserversorgung verstärkt rekommunalisieren, wodurch eine neue Generation öffentlicher Unternehmen entsteht. Diese Unternehmen unterscheiden sich in ihrer Organisation und...