We develop a theory in which a lower cost of job loss reduces the compensating wage premium workers require to join risky young firms. Lower labor costs encourage high-upside experimentation and raise productivity. Because experimentation is not directly observable, we exploit its life-cycle structure: experimentation risk is concentrated among young firms and resolved as firms mature. Using Danish matched employer-employee data and labor-market variation, we show that higher job-finding rates are associated with a lower young-mature wage differential. A randomized survey experiment supports the mechanism: worsening unemployment prospects increases the premium workers require to accept employment at higher-failure-risk young firms.

Does debt overhang distort only investment? This paper analyzes the subsequent effects of debt overhang on firm-level outcomes. Using an event study for German firms from 2004 to 2021, we find that, relative to comparable firms in the same industry and year, highly indebted firms do not merely invest less, which is the classic overhang result. They also hire less, and the two margins together translate into slower sales growth. The composition of the adjustment, however, depends on the firm’s growth regime. Highly indebted firms that keep expanding slow their hiring but raise capital per worker over the long run, substituting capital for labour along a flatter expansion path. Highly indebted firms that contract shed workers with no offsetting change in capital intensity: they scale down rather than restructure. These patterns hold in normal times as well as in crises and are concentrated among small and medium-sized limited-liability firms. Debt overhang is therefore not a pure investment wedge but a persistent drag on firm scale, whose incidence across inputs is determined by whether the firm is growing or shrinking.

Anfang September wählt Sachsen-Anhalt einen neuen Landtag, und die AfD hat erstmals die Chance auf eine eigene Regierungsmehrheit. Sachsen-Anhalt hat eine der ältesten Beschäftigtenstrukturen Deutschlands: Fast jeder dritte deutsche Beschäftigte ist 55 oder älter. Im vergangenen Jahrzehnt hat das Land netto bereits 40.580 deutsche Beschäftigte verloren. Die Beschäftigung blieb dennoch stabil, weil 51.960 ausländische Beschäftigte hinzukamen. Ein erheblicher Teil dieses Zuwachses stammt aus Fluchtkontexten: Seit Ende 2020 kamen rund 40% des Zuwachses aus Asylherkunftsländern und der Ukraine. Die internationale Evidenz zeigt nach Regierungswechseln zu zuwanderungskritischen Parteien Rückgänge des ausländischen Zuzugs zwischen 32 und 65%. Eine kompensierende Rückkehr Einheimischer ist nicht zu beobachten. Die Analyse zeigt, dass tausende von offenen Stellen in Sachsen-Anhalt nicht besetzt werden könnten, mit entsprechenden Auswirkungen auf Wohlstand und Wachstum.

We revisit the employer size wage effect (ESWE) – arguably the most basic and influential departure from the law of one price for labor. Our main result is that this canonical fact disappears completely across establishments within the same firm, even though they operate in different local labor markets. We uncover and dissect this fact by including a firm fixed effect in otherwise standard cross-sectional regressions of wages on establishment size. We implement this demanding specification in population-wide triple-linked firm-establishment-employee data in Germany. This result is new in the ESWE literature (for which our paper also provides the first systematic meta-analysis). This wage-size decoupling is hard to square with the view that employment is determined along a finitely elastic employerspecific labor supply curve – i.e., employers pay exactly the minimum needed for the quantity of labor, but no more – the foundation of the monopsony view. By contrast, large multi-establishment firms (MEF) appear to hire off their labor supply curves (or those curves are very elastic), pay wage premia above the monopsonistic minimum, and leave excess labor supply. We find some evidence for a reemergence of the ESWE within low-premium MEFs. Overall, at least for the 25% of German employment in large firms for which the ESWE disappears, wage setting and employment determination may be better accounted for by alternative models, namely accommodating above-market-clearing wage premia and rationing of labor supply, such as efficiency wage theories.

More individualistic countries experience higher economic growth. We provide evidence for a human-capital-based explanation of the growth effects of individualism. Using data from the largest international adult skill assessment, we establish that individualism shapes human capital formation. We identify the effects of individualism by exploiting variation between migrants at the origin-country, origin-language, and person level. Migrants from more individualistic cultures have higher cognitive skills and larger skill gains over time. They also invest more in their skills over the life cycle, as they acquire more years of schooling and are more likely to participate in adult education activities. Individualism is more important in explaining adult skill formation than any other cultural trait that previous literature has emphasized. In the labor market, more individualistic migrants earn higher wages and are less often unemployed. We show that our results cannot be explained by selective migration or omitted origin-country variables.

Weltweit höhere Energiepreise infolge des neuen Golfkriegs verschlechtern die Aussichten für die deutsche Konjunktur, auch wenn Mehrausgaben der öffentlichen Hand die gesamtwirtschaftliche Expansion in diesem und im kommenden Jahr stützen werden. Die Produktion dürfte im Jahr 2026 um 0,7% und im Jahr darauf um 1% zunehmen. Ähnliche Expansionsraten sind auch für Ostdeutschland zu erwarten.

Die Entscheidung für eine Ausbildung oder ein Studium im Bereich Mathematik, Informatik, Naturwissenschaften und Technik (MINT) hängt nicht nur von absoluten Leistungen in Mathematik ab, sondern davon, wie gut Mathematik relativ zu anderen Fächern – etwa Sprache – gelingt. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die intergenerationale Übertragung solcher relativen Stärken in Mathematik und Sprache auf Basis niederländischer Testdaten von Eltern und ihren Kindern. Wir zeigen, dass Eltern, die im Verhältnis zu Sprache besonders gut in Mathematik abschneiden, mit deutlich höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit Kinder haben, die ebenfalls relativ besser in Mathematik sind. Zudem belegen wir, dass diese Übertragung relativer Stärken nicht ausschließlich genetisch oder familiär geprägt ist, sondern durch Schule und Lernumfeld – und damit durch Bildungspolitik – beeinflusst werden kann.