Thema Arbeit und Beschäftigung

Boards of Major German Companies Are Gradually Changing: Editorial

Proportion of Women on Top-Decision Making Bodies of Large Companies Increasing, Except on Supervisory Boards in the Financial Sector

The share of women on executive boards of large companies in Germany has increased somewhat more strongly than in previous years. The top 200 companies reached the ten percent mark for the first time: women held 14 more board positions than in the previous year, 94 out of 907. Growth was also somewhat more dynamic on the executive boards of the largest listed companies and companies with government- ...

More Women on Supervisory Boards: Increasing Indications that the Effect of the Gender Quota Extends to Executive Boards

The statutory gender quota for supervisory boards is effective: the proportion of women on supervisory boards has increased over the past years, especially in the companies subject to the quota. But is the quota creating trickle-down effects for executive boards? As the second part of the DIW Berlin Women Executives Barometer, this report analyzes whether a relationship between the growth of the proportion ...

Langsam wandeln sich die Führungsetagen deutscher Großunternehmen: Editorial

The Effect of Unemployment on the Smoking Behavior of Couples

Although unemployment likely entails various externalities, research examining its spillover effects on spouses is scarce. This is the first paper to estimate effects of unemployment on the smoking behavior of both spouses. Using German Socio‐Economic Panel data, we combine matching and difference‐in‐differences estimation, employing the post‐double‐selection method for control variable selection via ...

Hours Risk and Wage Risk: Repercussions over the Life-Cycle

We decompose permanent earnings risk into contributions from hours and wage shocks. To distinguish between hours shocks, modeled as innovations to the marginal disutility of work, and labor supply reactions to wage shocks we formulate a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply. Both permanent wage and hours shocks are important to explain earnings risk, but wage shocks have greater relevance. ...

Parental Leave Reform and Long-Run Earnings of Mothers

Paid parental leave schemes have been shown to increase women's employment rates but decrease their wages in case of extended leave durations. In view of these potential trade-offs, many countries are discussing the optimal design of parental leave policies. We analyze the impact of a major parental leave reform on mothers' long-term earnings. The 2007 German parental leave reform replaced a means-tested ...

Tied and Troubled: Revisiting Tied Migration and Subsequent Employment

ObjectiveThis article looks at couples' migration decision making processes and their gender‐specific employment consequences after migration to Germany.BackgroundInternational migration has evolved into a common experience for couples around the globe. Previous research has focused on the internal migration of couples and families. This article is the first to consider couples' international migration ...

The Rising Longevity Gap by Lifetime Earnings: Distributional Implications for the Pension System

This study uses German social security records to provide novel evidence on cohort trends of the heterogeneity in life expectancy by lifetime earnings and, additionally, documents the distributional implications of this earnings-related heterogeneity. We find a strong association between lifetime earnings and life expectancy at age 65 and show that the longevity gap is increasing across cohorts. For ...

Timing of Communication

Using an experiment, we demonstrate that a communication regime in which a worker communicates about his intended effort is less effective in: (i) soliciting truthful information; and (ii) motivating effort than one in which he communicates about his past effort. Our experiment uses a real-effort task, which additionally allows us to demonstrate the effects of communication on effort over time. We ...