We measure desired labour supply at the extensive (employment) margin in two representative surveys of the U.S. and German populations. We elicit reservation raises: the percent wage change that renders a given individual indifferent between employment and nonemployment. It is equal to her reservation wage divided by her actual, or potential, wage. The reservation raise distribution is the nonparametric aggregate labour supply curve. Locally, the curve exhibits large short-run elasticities above 3, consistent with business cycle evidence. For larger upward shifts, arc elasticities shrink towards 0.5, consistent with quasi-experimental evidence from tax holidays. Existing models fail to match this nonconstant, asymmetric curve.

We analyse the impact of robot adoption on employment composition using novel micro data on robot use in German manufacturing plants linked with social security records and data on job tasks. Our task-based model predicts more favourable employment effects for the least routine-task intensive occupations and for young workers, with the latter being better at adapting to change. An event-study analysis of robot adoption confirms both predictions. We do not find adverse employment effects for any occupational or age group, but churning among low-skilled workers rises sharply. We conclude that the displacement effect of robots is occupation biased but age neutral, whereas the reinstatement effect is age biased and benefits young workers most.

Wir untersuchen die Veränderung der Unternehmensdynamik in Europa seit 2000 anhand neuer Daten, die wir für 19 europäische Länder erhoben haben. In allen Ländern dokumentieren wir einen breit angelegten Rückgang der Unternehmensdynamik, der die meisten Wirtschaftszweige und Firmengrößenklassen betrifft. Große und ältere Unternehmen verzeichnen den stärksten Rückgang der Unternehmensdynamik. Gleichzeitig geht der Anteil an Personen, die in jungen Unternehmen arbeiten, zurück. In Übereinstimmung mit Ergebnissen aus den USA reagieren Unternehmen in Europa weniger stark auf Produktivitätsveränderungen als früher („Reaktivität von Firmen“), was einen Teil des Rückgangs der Unternehmensdynamik erklärt. Im Gegensatz zur bisherigen Evidenz für die USA hat sich in Europa jedoch auch die Dynamik von Produktivitätsschocks abgeschwächt, was einen weiteren Teil des Rückgangs der Unternehmensdynamik erklärt. Für das deutsche Verarbeitende Gewerbe berechnen wir, dass der Rückgang der Reaktivität von Firmen ca. 40% des Rückgangs der Unternehmensdynamik erklärt, während die Abschwächung von Produktivitätsschocks 60% des Rückgangs der Unternehmensdynamik erklärt. Diese Prozesse deuten darauf hin, dass Marktfriktionen, wie beispielsweise Firmenmarktmacht in Europa, zu zunehmenden Fehlallokationen führen und dass die Innovationsprozesse sich abgeschwächt haben, woraus eine geringere Umverteilung von Marktanteilen zwischen Firmen resultiert.

Using a newly collected dataset at the plant level from 2014 to 2018, we provide the first microscopic portrait of robotization in Germany and study the correlates of robot adoption. Our descriptive analysis uncovers five stylized facts: (1) Robot use is relatively rare. (2) The distribution of robots is highly skewed. (3) New robot adopters contribute substantially to the recent robotization. (4) Robot users are exceptional. (5) Heterogeneity in robot types matters. Our regression results further suggest plant size, high-skilled labor share, exporter status, and labor shortage to be strongly associated with the future probability of robot adoption.

We study a mentoring program that aims to improve the labor-market prospects of school-attending adolescents from disadvantaged families by offering them a university-student mentor. Our RCT investigates program effectiveness on three outcome dimensions that are highly predictive of later labor-market success: math grades, patience/social skills, and labor-market orientation. For low-SES adolescents, the mentoring increases a combined index of the outcomes by over half a standard deviation after one year, with significant increases in each dimension. Part of the treatment effect is mediated by establishing mentors as attachment figures who provide guidance for the future. Effects on grades and labor-market orientation, but not on patience/social skills, persist three years after program start. By that time, the mentoring also improves early realizations of school-to-work transitions for low-SES adolescents. The mentoring is not effective for higher-SES adolescents. The results show that substituting lacking family support by other adults can help disadvantaged children at adolescent age.

Establishment closures have lasting negative consequences for the workers displaced from their jobs. We study how these consequences vary with the amount of skill mismatch that workers experience after job displacement. Developing new measures of occupational skill redundancy and skill shortage, we analyze the work histories of individuals in Germany between 1975 and 2010. We estimate difference-in-differences models, using a sample of displaced workers who are matched to statistically similar non-displaced workers. We find that displacements increase the probability of occupation change eleven-fold. Moreover, the magnitude of post-displacement earnings losses strongly depends on the type of skill mismatch that workers experience in such job switches. Whereas skill shortages are associated with relatively quick returns to the earnings trajectories that displaced workers would have experienced absent displacement, skill redundancy sets displaced workers on paths with permanently lower earnings. We show that these differences can be attributed to differences in mismatch after displacement, and not to intrinsic differences between workers making different post-displacement career choices.

Using proprietary data from AngelList Talent, we study how startup job seekers’ search and application behavior changed during the COVID-19 downturn. We find that workers shifted their searches and applications away from less-established startups and toward more-established ones, even within the same individual over time. At the firm level, this shift was not offset by an influx of new job seekers. Less-established startups experienced a relative decline in the quantity and quality of applications, ultimately affecting their hiring. Our findings uncover a flight-to-safety channel in the labor market that may amplify the procyclical nature of entrepreneurial activities.

We investigate public preferences for equity-enhancing policies in access to early child care, using a survey experiment with a representative sample of the German population (n ≈ 4, 800). We observe strong misperceptions about migrant-native inequalities in early child care that vary by respondents’ age and right-wing voting preferences. Randomly providing information about the actual extent of inequalities has a nuanced impact on the support for equity-enhancing policy reforms: it increases support for respondents who initially underestimated these inequalities, and tends to decrease support for those who initially overestimated them. This asymmetric effect leads to a more consensual policy view, substantially decreasing the polarization in policy support between under- and overestimators. Our results suggest that correcting misperceptions can align public policy preferences, potentially leading to less polarized debates about how to address inequalities and discrimination.

This paper uses a new empirical design to explore how labor market polarization affects individuals’ incentive to pursue education funded on the margin by student debt. We argue that the labor market polarization–where automation replaces mid-skill and mid-education-level job–changes the marginal benefits of education and training and sharpens incentives to incur student debt. We advance a new measure of labor market polarizations that allows to capture the heterogeneity of this phenomena across geographies and time. Using this measure, we find that U.S. CBSAs that experience deeper labor market polarization see an increase in student debt balances and in the number of people pursuing student debt. On average, the decline in middle-skill jobs and wages has little effect on individuals’ ability to pay down existing student debt. The effects are most pronounced in ZIP codes with lower average credit scores, lower incomes, and higher share of the minority population.