Fehlende Fachkräfte in Deutschland – Unterschiede in den Betrieben und mögliche Erklärungsfaktoren: Ergebnisse aus dem IAB-Betriebspanel 2018
Eva Dettmann, Daniel Fackler, Steffen Müller, Georg Neuschäffer, Viktor Slavtchev, Ute Leber, Barbara Schwengler
IAB-Forschungsbericht 10/2019,
2019
Abstract
In the years after the economic crisis, the economic situation of establishments in West and East Germany has improved steadily. At the same time, increased labor market dynamics and a positive trend in total employment can be observed. Also the demand for skilled employees reached a new high of 2.7 million in 2018. Only about 60 percent of the demand could be covered, which is also reflected in a further increase of the so-called non-occupancy quota. With regard to the distribution of this indicator for skilled labor shortages, we observe clear sector- and size-specific differences as well as regional heterogeneity. The quota is particularly high in the construction industry and in agriculture and forestry, with more than half the positions left vacant. A positive correlation between shortages of skilled labor and the use of temporary work, flexible working hours and investments in vocational training and further education is assessed in a multivariate analysis. The structure of formal occupational skill requirements did not change very much over recent years. However, a clear trend towards more flexible work organization can be observed. For example, about one quarter of the establishments offer teleworking. The share of part-time employment is also increasing nationwide, especially in sectors with a higher proportion of women, such as the service industries or the public sector. The share of marginal employment is particularly high in sectors that are characterized by cyclical and/or seasonal demand fluctuations or comparatively unspecific skill requirements – and above-average shortages of skilled labor. In 2018, the proportion of establishments authorized to provide in-house vocational training rose for the first time since 2010 – to 54 percent in Germany. In Eastern Germany, the share is significantly lower at 49 percent. The proportion of authorized establishments that actually train apprentices has been relatively stable at around 50 percent for several years. Both successfully occupied and vacant apprenticeships are distributed very heterogeneously across sectors. The recruitment rate of successful graduates is about three quarters. In establishments with skilled labor shortages, both the training rate and the graduate hiring rate are higher, suggesting that vocational training is already used here as an alternative strategy for recruiting skilled employees. The share of establishments supporting further education of their employees remains stable at about fifty percent for several years, and the proportion of employees participating in training is still about one third. A comparatively higher rate of further education among unskilled employees in establishments with skilled labor shortages indicates that internal resources are being increasingly used here to meet the demand for skilled employees.
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19.09.2019 • 19/2019
Long-term effects of privatisation in eastern Germany: award-winning US economist begins large-scale research project at the IWH
It is one of the most prestigious awards in the German scientific community: the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award 2019 endowed with €1.5 million goes to Ufuk Akcigit, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. At the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), Akcigit aims to use innovative methods to investigate why the economy in eastern Germany is still lagging behind that in western Germany – and what role the privatisation process 30 years ago played in this.
Reint E. Gropp
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Drivers of Effort: Evidence from Employee Absenteeism
Morten Bennedsen, Margarita Tsoutsoura, Daniel Wolfenzon
Journal of Financial Economics,
No. 3,
2019
Abstract
We use detailed information on individual absent spells of all employees in 4140 firms in Denmark to show large differences in average absenteeism across firms. Using employees who switch firms, we decompose days absent into an individual component (e.g., motivation, work ethic) and a firm component (e.g., incentives, corporate culture). We find the firm component explains 50%–60% of the difference in absenteeism across firms, with the individual component explaining the rest. We present suggestive evidence of the mechanisms behind the firm effect with family firm status and concentrated ownership strongly correlated with decreases in absenteeism. We also analyze the firm characteristics that correlate with the individual effect and find that firms with stronger career incentives attract lower-absenteeism employees.
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The Internet Effects on Sex Crime Offenses – Evidence from the Broadband Internet Expansion in Germany
André Diegmann
Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization,
September
2019
Abstract
This paper studies the effects of the introduction of a new mass medium on sex crime in Germany. I use unique data on criminal offenses and broadband internet measured at the municipal level to shed light on this issue. In order to address endogeneity in broadband internet availability, I exploit technical peculiarities at the regional level that determine the roll-out of high-speed internet. Results provide evidence of a substitution effect of internet exposure on sex crime. The substitution effect is neither driven by differences in reporting behavior, nor by matching processes at the victim and offender side. This suggests that the consumption of extreme media plays an important role in explaining the documented high-speed internet effect.
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Bankruptcy Spillovers
Shai B. Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Xavier Giroud, Benjamin Iverson
Journal of Financial Economics,
No. 3,
2019
Abstract
How do different bankruptcy approaches affect the local economy? Using US Census microdata, we explore the spillover effects of reorganization and liquidation on geographically proximate firms. We exploit the random assignment of bankruptcy judges as a source of exogenous variation in the probability of liquidation. We find that employment declines substantially in the immediate neighborhood of the liquidated establishments, relative to reorganized establishments. The spillover effects are highly localized and concentrate in nontradable and service sectors, consistent with a reduction in local consumer traffic and a decline in knowledge spillovers between firms. The evidence highlights the externalities that bankruptcy design can impose on nonbankrupt firms.
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How Forecast Accuracy Depends on Conditioning Assumptions
Carola Engelke, Katja Heinisch, Christoph Schult
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 18,
2019
Abstract
This paper examines the extent to which errors in economic forecasts are driven by initial assumptions that prove to be incorrect ex post. Therefore, we construct a new data set comprising an unbalanced panel of annual forecasts from different institutions forecasting German GDP and the underlying assumptions. We explicitly control for different forecast horizons to proxy the information available at the release date. Over 75% of squared errors of the GDP forecast comove with the squared errors in their underlying assumptions. The root mean squared forecast error for GDP in our regression sample of 1.52% could be reduced to 1.13% by setting all assumption errors to zero. This implies that the accuracy of the assumptions is of great importance and that forecasters should reveal the framework of their assumptions in order to obtain useful policy recommendations based on economic forecasts.
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East Germany Three Decades After the Wall Came Down: What has Been Achieved and What Should Economic Policy Do?
Reint E. Gropp, Gerhard Heimpold
Wirtschaftsdienst,
No. 7,
2019
Abstract
The persistent difference in productivity between East and West Germany not only results from the relative absence of large firms based in the East as many believe. Companies of all sizes exhibit an East-West productivity gap. The gap is larger in urban regions. Scarcity of skilled labour has emerged as the new barrier to business development. In order to boost productivity, economic policy should avoid additional subsidies that are conditional on creating jobs. Additionally, the potential of East German urban areas should be better explored. Mitigating the shortage in qualified workers requires in-migration of skilled labour from abroad, supported by an open mindset and environment.
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HIP, RIP, and the Robustness of Empirical Earnings Processes
Florian Hoffmann
Quantitative Economics,
No. 3,
2019
Abstract
The dispersion of individual returns to experience, often referred to as heterogeneity of income profiles (HIP), is a key parameter in empirical human capital models, in studies of life‐cycle income inequality, and in heterogeneous agent models of life‐cycle labor market dynamics. It is commonly estimated from age variation in the covariance structure of earnings. In this study, I show that this approach is invalid and tends to deliver estimates of HIP that are biased upward. The reason is that any age variation in covariance structures can be rationalized by age‐dependent heteroscedasticity in the distribution of earnings shocks. Once one models such age effects flexibly the remaining identifying variation for HIP is the shape of the tails of lag profiles. Credible estimation of HIP thus imposes strong demands on the data since one requires many earnings observations per individual and a low rate of sample attrition. To investigate empirically whether the bias in estimates of HIP from omitting age effects is quantitatively important, I thus rely on administrative data from Germany on quarterly earnings that follow workers from labor market entry until 27 years into their career. To strengthen external validity, I focus my analysis on an education group that displays a covariance structure with qualitatively similar properties like its North American counterpart. I find that a HIP model with age effects in transitory, persistent and permanent shocks fits the covariance structure almost perfectly and delivers small and insignificant estimates for the HIP component. In sharp contrast, once I estimate a standard HIP model without age‐effects the estimated slope heterogeneity increases by a factor of thirteen and becomes highly significant, with a dramatic deterioration of model fit. I reach the same conclusions from estimating the two models on a different covariance structure and from conducting a Monte Carlo analysis, suggesting that my quantitative results are not an artifact of one particular sample.
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Klimaschutz und Kohleausstieg: Politische Strategien und Maßnahmen bis 2030 und darüber hinaus
Pao-Yu Oei, Casimir Lorenz, Sophie Schmalz, Hanna Brauers, Philipp Herpich, Christian von Hirschhausen, Claudia Kemfert, Barbara Dröschel, Jan Hildebrand, Juri Horst, Uwe Klann, Patrick Matschoss, Michael Porzig, Irina Rau, Bernhard Wern, Hans-Ulrich Brautzsch, Gerhard Heimpold, Katja Heinisch, Oliver Holtemöller, Christoph Schult, Hauke Hermann, Dirk Heyen, Katja Schumacher, Cornelia Ziehm
Pao-Yu Oei et al., Klimaschutz und Kohleausstieg: Politische Strategien und Maßnahmen bis 2030 und darüber hinaus. Abschlussbericht. Climate Change 27/2019. Dessau-Roßlau: Umweltbundesamt,
2019
published in: Energy
Abstract
The present study examines the socio-economic consequences of a climate policy-driven coal phase-out in Germany. A focus lies on the lignite industry – especially in the lignite regions. In a first step, the regions are spatially defined and described. Additional analysis is based on energy economic modelling. The model examines phase-out scenarios, which differ in the chosen criteria for the order of power plant closure (specific emissions or plant age). An input-output-model and a regional macroeconomic model build up on these phase-out pathways and examine the socio economic effects of the phase-out in the lignite regions as well as in the rest of Germany. The combination of both models offers the advantage to consider the phase-out from different perspective and hence derive different and more robust effects. The models show, on the one hand, that in an early phase-out the negative effects of structural change are visible earlier. On the other hand, recuperative effects can counteract the negative consequences according to the regional economic model.
Furthermore, the structural change creates economic opportunities. Those opportunities are primarily diversified economic activities. Case studies show significant employment potentials for the lignite regions. New jobs in renewable energies and energetic optimization of buildings can already counteract the negative employment effects associated with the investigated structural change. The study concludes, describing accompanying political instruments that can support the regions on their way to master the challenges of the up-coming structural change.
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26.06.2019 • 14/2019
Study: How financial crises lower life satisfaction and how to prevent this
Financial crises not only result in severe disruptions to the economic system, they also affect people’s life satisfaction. A new study by Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) shows that weaker members of society are more affected by increased uncertainty during crisis times, even if they may not be speculating on the stock market themselves. This could potentially also lower their propensity to consume, thereby intensifying the impact of a financial crisis. The study was recently published in “The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy”.
Lena Tonzer
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