Gender inequality remains a pressing issue in our society. Women are underrepresented in many decision-making positions and the gender pay gap remains at 16%. Whether or how language contributes to forming and transporting gender stereotypes has sparked intense scientific and public debate. In German, masculine role nouns are still often used in a generic sense to address people of unknown gender ...
Current Project| Gender Economics, Public Economics
This project investigates the underlying causes of gender gaps in the labor market, emphasizing skill mismatches, task divisions, social norms, and implicit gender biases.
By employing quasi- and survey-experimental methods with data from Germany and OECD countries, the research examines policies like parental leave and public child care.
It explores the effects of these factors on skill...
Current Project| Gender Economics, Public Economics
The goal of this project is to empirically analyze the work incentive and employment effects of earnings-related subsidies in the presence of high structural unemployment when labor market flexibility is hindered by wage rigidity related to institutional factors, in particular minimum wages and means-tested income support for unemployed people. We specify and estimate a structural microeconometric...
Recurring Project| Public Economics, Gender Economics
Increasing the employment rate of older people has the potential to significantly counteract the skills shortage and strengthen the financial basis of social security. Empirical analyses show that this potential is particularly high among women nearing retirement, who often work part-time or in mini-jobs, or are unemployed.
The aim of this project is to investigate:
a) why employment rates are...
Completed Project| Gender Economics, Public Economics
In this project, we will evaluate and compare the impact of unemployment, parental leave and short- time work on the careers of men and women, as well as on the gender division of unpaid care work within families. In particular, we address the question of whether involuntary paid leave in form of short-time work affects gender gaps in the labor market as well as the existing gender division of...
The gender wage gap is a persistent and pervasive phenomenon observable in virtually all countries. It has strong implications for a society since it is one main driver of inequality in a country. Therefore, there exists an active public debate and an important academic literature that describes and quantifies the gender wage gap, analyses the reasons for this gap and discusses potential policy...
Completed Project| Gender Economics, Public Economics
Equality between women and men in the labor market and the political options available in this context are currently the subject of intense debate in Germany. Ten years ago, one of the reasons given for introducing parental allowance was that this measure would promote both gender equality in the labor market and a more equal division of childcare between mothers and fathers. This research project...