1. About the IWH
  2. Team
  3. Economists

Maximilian Mayer, PhD

Maximilian Mayer, PhD
Current Position

since 9/22

Economist in the Department of Structural Change and Productivity

Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) – Member of the Leibniz Association

Research Interests
  • corporate finance
  • labour economics

Maximilian Mayer joined the Department of Structural Change and Productivity in September 2022. His research focuses on labour economics and corporate finance.

Maximilian Mayer received his bachelor's degree from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and master's degree from Goethe University Frankfurt. He received his PhD from the Graduate School of Economics, Finance, and Management (GSEFM).

Your contact

Maximilian Mayer, PhD
Maximilian Mayer, PhD
Mitglied - Department Structural Change and Productivity
Send Message +49 345 7753-786 Personal page

Publications

Refereed Publications

cover_journal-of-economic-behavior-and-organization.jpg

Hollywood, Wall Street, and Mistrusting Individual Investors

Guido Lenz Maximilian Mayer

in: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, June 2023

Abstract

Individual investors reduce their trading activity in financial markets after the release of negatively biased Hollywood movies related to financial markets. These movies regularly depict financial markets and professionals active in them as marked by greed and corruption (Lichter et al. 1997). This decline in trading activity at the extensive margin comes together with depressed investor sentiment marked by higher likelihoods and volumes of selling than of buying transactions by those investors still active. Their avoidance of investing in and tendency to trade out of stocks related to companies in the financial industry, as well as their shift from actively managed mutual funds to passive vehicles (ETFs), provide evidence for the deterioration of investors’ trust in the financial industry and its managers. This channel is in line with existing literature on subjective beliefs in investment decisions and the impact of biased media coverage, such as the negative depiction of financial markets, shareholders, and managers in Hollywood movies.

read publication
cover_european-economic-review.jpg

Global Banking: Endogenous Competition and Risk Taking

Ester Faia Sébastien Laffitte Maximilian Mayer Gianmarco Ottaviano

in: European Economic Review, April 2021

Abstract

When banks expand abroad, their riskiness decreases if foreign expansion happens in destination countries that are more competitive than their origin countries. We reach this conclusion in three steps. First, we develop a flexible dynamic model of global banking with endogenous competition and endogenous risk-taking. Second, we calibrate and simulate the model to generate empirically relevant predictions. Third, we validate these predictions by testing them on an original dataset covering the activities of the 15 European global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). Our results hold across alternative measures of individual and systemic bank risk.

read publication
All Refereed Publications

 

Book Chapters

cover_mayer_robots-and-ai_2022.jpg

On the Employment Consequences of Automation and Offshoring: A Labor Market Sorting View

Ester Faia Sébastien Laffitte Maximilian Mayer Gianmarco Ottaviano

in: Lili Yan Ing, Gene M. Grossman (eds), Robots and AI: A New Economic Era. Routledge: London, 2022

Abstract

We argue that automation may make workers and firms more selective in matching their specialized skills and tasks. We call this phenomenon “core-biased technological change”, and wonder whether something similar could be relevant also for offshoring. Looking for evidence in occupational data for European industries, we find that automation increases workers’ and firms’ selectivity as captured by longer unemployment duration, less skill-task mismatch, and more concentration of specialized knowledge in specific tasks. This does not happen in the case of offshoring, though offshoring reinforces the effects of automation. We show that a labor market model with two-sided heterogeneity and search frictions can rationalize these empirical findings if automation strengthens while offshoring weakens the assortativity between workers’ skills and firms’ tasks in the production process, and automation and offshoring complement each other. Under these conditions, automation decreases employment and increases wage inequality whereas offshoring has opposite effects.

read publication

Working Papers

cover_DP_2023-02.jpg

Climate Change Concerns and Information Spillovers from Socially-connected Friends

Maximilian Mayer

in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 2, 2023

Abstract

This paper studies the role of social connections in shaping individuals’ concerns about climate change. I combine granular climate data, region-level social network data and survey responses for 24 European countries in order to document large information spillovers. Individuals become more concerned about climate change when their geographically distant friends living in sociallyconnected regions have experienced large increases in temperatures since 1990. Exploring the heterogeneity of the spillover effects, I uncover that the learning via social networks plays a central role. Further, results illustrate the important role of social values and economic preferences for understanding how information spillovers affect individual concerns.

read publication
cover_SSRN.png

The Value of Firm Networks: A Natural Experiment on Board Connections

Ester Faia Maximilian Mayer Vincenzo Pezone

in: SAFE Working Papers, No. 269, 2022

Abstract

We present causal evidence on the effect of boardroom networks on firm value and compensation policies. We exploit a ban on interlocking directorates of Italian financial and insurance companies as exogenous variation and show that firms that lose centrality in the network experience negative abnormal returns around the announcement date. The key driver of our results is the role of boardroom connections in reducing asymmetric information. The complementarities with the input-output and cross-ownership networks are consistent with this channel. Using hand-collected data, we also show that network centrality has a positive effect on directors’ compensation, providing evidence of rent sharing.

read publication
cover_IZA-discussion-papers-2020-march.jpg

Automation, Globalization and Vanishing Jobs: A Labor Market Sorting View

Ester Faia Sébastien Laffitte Maximilian Mayer Gianmarco Ottaviano

in: IZA Discussion Paper, No. 13267, 2020

Abstract

We show, theoretically and empirically, that the effects of technological change associated with automation and offshoring on the labor market can substantially deviate from standard neoclassical conclusions when search frictions hinder efficient assortative matching between firms with heterogeneous tasks and workers with heterogeneous skills. Our key hypothesis is that better matches enjoy a comparative advantage in exploiting automation and a comparative disadvantage in exploiting offshoring. It implies that automation (offshoring) may reduce (raise) employment by lengthening (shortening) unemployment duration due to higher (lower) match selectivity. We find empirical support for this implication in a dataset covering 92 occupations and 16 sectors in 13 European countries from 1995 to 2010.

read publication
Browse all working papers

Keywords

Labour Market East Germany
Mitglied der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft LogoTotal-Equality-LogoSupported by the BMWK