Gender Economics Research Group
Events

Stress and Resilience in the Labor Market

Diversity in Teams and Creative Output

Modern labor markets increasingly rely on teamwork for tasks that require creative thinking, yet little is known about how such creative output is produced. We exploit the randomized allocation of first-year undergraduate students to study groups in a large Economics module to examine how diversity in team members’ backgrounds affects the creativity of their collaborative work. Each group produces...

The trickle-down effects of higher education affirmative action

Occupations, Disability Insurance, and Career Choices

Work-limiting disabilities pose a significant risk to the earnings potential and welfare of older workers. While coverage of public disability insurance (DI) systems is almost universal, the risk of becoming dependent on DI varies across occupations. In this paper, I study the value of public DI across different occupations using data from administrative social security records in Germany. I...

A missed opportunity? Labor demand shocks and workforce diversity

We study how labor demand shocks affect workforce diversity in the absence of targeted diversity policies. Exploiting German reunification as a natural experiment, we analyze the academic labor market where nearly all social sciences professors in East Germany were replaced while STEM faculty remained largely unchanged. Using administrative data and a regional difference-in-differences design, we...

Raising the Retirement Age for Women. Spillover Effects on Young Adults’ Labor Supply in Brazil**CANCELLED**

CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS Latin America is facing rapid population aging. To address the sustainability of contributory pension systems, many countries are considering increasing the retirement age. One such case is Brazil, where a pension reform in 2019 raised the retirement age from 60 to 62 for women. While the effects of such reforms on the labor force participation of older adults and their...

Firm Adjustment to a Policy-Induced Negative Labor Supply Shock: Evidence from Germany

With Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan, Jan Nimczik and Lennert Peede In times of an increasing scarcity of workers, Germany has in a rare move decreased the retirement age for a sizeable group of the workforce. This paper investigates the effect of this negative labor supply shock on firm and individual level outcomes using the universe of firms in the IEB as well as matched employer-employee data from...

Part-time Traps (joint with Jan Berendsen, Iris Kesternich and Christian Pugnaghi Zimpelmann)

Most women reduce their labor supply after childbirth. When children become older, most women spend less time on women spend less time on childcare activities. Yet, female labor supply recovers little as children age and part-time work remains common among mothers of older children. Understanding the motivation behind labor supply choices of women with older children is crucial to design effective...

Inventors‘ Personal Experience of Natural Disasters and Green Innovation

We show that personal experiences affect high-stakes economic decisions among inventors. Using matched patent and survey data from French and German inventors linked to natural disaster records, we exploit exogenous variation in disaster exposure. Inventors personally affected by natural disasters subsequently produce 8.2 percent more green patents, primarily driven by emission-reducing mitigation...

In the Shadow of Brothers: Unintended Impacts of a School Entry Policy on Migrant Girls

Siblings are the ultimate peers, deeply shaping one another’s development. Do these influences vary with a family’s cultural background? I estimate how sibling spillovers differ for girls and boys with older brothers or sisters in migrant and native families, using a regression discontinuity design on high-quality administrative data. Exploiting exogenous variation in older siblings’ achievement...

Working Longer: The Effects of a Higher Retirement Age on Work-Related Health Investments During the Working Life

(joint with Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan, Felix Weinhardt) Health investments are vital for maintaining physical and mental well-being throughout working life, and their importance is amplified with rising retirement ages due to demographic aging. This is the first study to examine if a longer working life causally increases institutionalized health investments. We explore the impact of a German...

The Downside of Fertility

The fertility decline is everywhere in the world today. Moreover, the decline goes decades back in the histories of rich countries. Birthrates have been below replacement in the U.S. and Europe since the mid-1970s, although further declines occurred after the Great Recession. The reasons for the declines from the 1970s to the early 2000s involve greater female autonomy and a mismatch between the...

Early retirement for early starters - A well targeted policy for people with high job demand?

(joint work with Lars Felder, Johannes Geyer, and Peter Haan) Despite growing demographic pressure, a reform in Germany has lowered the full retirement age (FRA) temporarily for early starters. In this paper we analyze whether the reform was well targeted. Specifically, we study if the early retirement scheme benefits workers with high job strain or if workers with better jobs and the potential...

Policy Uncertainty, Misinformation and Statutory Retirement Age Reform

This study examines the impact of Statutory Retirement Age (SRA) reforms on individual behavior and welfare in the presence of policy uncertainty and misinformation. We develop a structural life-cycle model in which individuals are uncertain about the future evolution of the SRA and misinformed about its importance. We derive individuals’ expectations and information on the SRA from self-elicited...

Negative labor supply shock and firms (joint with Peter Haan, Johannes Geyer, Jan Nimczik)

Part I: Lars Felder, "Negative labor supply shock and firms" (Joint with Peter Haan, Johannes Geyer, Jan Nimczik) In times of an increasing scarcity of workers, Germany has in a rare move decreased the retirement age for a sizeable section of the working force. This paper investigates the effect of this negative labor supply shock on firm and individual level outcomes using matched employer...

Divorce as a Liberation from Violence: The Role of Legal Protections and Women’s Shelters

Does increased legal infrastructure empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent victims of intimate partner violence from seeking help and leaving their abuser, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents to the police nor accessing support services. I study the introduction of the 2002 Violence Protection Act in Germany, which...

Gender Disparities in French Academic Careers: A Multi-Stage Analysis of Selection

This project examines the French academic pipeline to identify when and why women become underrepresented in faculty positions: I investigate whether they are less likely to apply, less likely to succeed or a combination of both. Using comprehensive administrative data combining Thèses.fr doctoral records and administrative data from the Conseil National des Universités (CNU), I analyze gender...

Social Mobility and Economic Development

We explore the role of social mobility as driver of economic development. First, we draw the geography of intergenerational mobility of education for 52 Latin American regions, as well as its evolution over time. Then, through a novel weighting procedure that considers the aggregate participation of cohorts to the economy in every year, we estimate the effect of changes in mobility on economic...

2. DIW Women’s Finance Summit

After failing to fully recover from the last financial crisis, the pandemic poses major new challenges for banks. However, this time, banks are not the problem, but part of the solution. By providing credit to the economy, banks play a crucial role in fighting the pandemic by ensuring the transmission of fiscal and monetary stimulus to the economy. Nevertheless, banks are not among the winners of...

Health Effects of Prenatal and Infancy Home Visiting Programs by Nurses: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial

Home visiting programmes are increasingly being implemented across the globe to help vulnerable families with young children, however longer-term experimental evidence on their health impacts on both parents and children is scarce. In this paper we study the medium-term health impacts of a randomized control trial to evaluate the Nurse Family Partnership (NFP), one of the oldest home visitation...