Cluster-Seminar Public Finances and Living Conditions

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-employee data from the SIAB. We show that affected workers make use of the reform and exit the labor force earlier. The intensity of the shock varies across firms, with some experiencing substantial losses in their workforce, while others remain largely unaffected. Our data allows us to investigate effects on the careers of coworkers as well as firm-level outcomes.

Part II: Maxi Schaller, "Non-cognitive skills and wages" (joint with Richard Blundell and Peter Haan)

In this paper, we use SOEP-ADIAB data to investigate the differential wage returns to non-cognitive skills, and explore how these returns depend on the occupational task content. The dataset enables us to extract three dimensions of non-cognitive skills capturing sociability, diligence and emotional stability. We demonstrate how individuals sort into occupations with high social-skill requirements based on their skill profiles. In our main analysis, we estimate a model of tenure-wage growth. Preliminary results indicate that individuals experience stronger wage growth with tenure in occupations where social skills are more important.