There is an ongoing debate about the economic effects of individualism. We establish that individualism leads to better educational and labor market outcomes. Using data from the largest international adult skill assessment, 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. In fact, individualism is more important in explaining adult skill formation than any other cultural trait that has been emphasized in previous literature. 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.

We examine how firms adapt their organization when they go public. To conform with the requirements of public capital markets, we expect IPO firms to become more organized, making the firm more accountable and its human capital more easily replaceable. We find that IPO firms transform into a more hierarchical organization with smaller departments. Managerial oversight increases. Organizational functions dedicated to accounting, finance, information and communication, and human resources become much more prominent. Employee turnover is sizeable and directly related to changes in hierarchical layers. New hires are better educated, but younger and less experienced than incumbents, which reflects the staffing needs of a more hierarchical organization. Wage inequality increases as firms become more hierarchical. Overall, going public is associated with a comprehensive transformation of the firm's organization which becomes geared towards efficiently operating a public firm.

In this study, establishment-level employment effects of investment grants in Germany are estimated. In addition to the quantitative effects, I provide empirical evidence of funding effects on different aspects of employment quality (earnings, qualifications, and job security) for the period 2004 to 2020. The database combines project-level treatment data, establishment-level information on firm characteristics and employee structure, and regional information at the district-level. For the estimations, I combine the difference-in-differences approach of Callaway and Sant’Anna (2021) with ties matching at the cohort level. The estimations yield positive effects on the number of employees, but point to contradicting effects of investment grants on different aspects of employment quality.

Using the universe of high school and college admissions data in Croatia, we geocoded nearly half a million students’ residential addresses to investigate how their college and major choices are influenced by older neighbors and peers. Using an RDD to exploit time and program variation in admission cutoffs, we find that having an older neighbor who was admitted to and enrolled in a program increases a student’s probability of applying to the program by about 20%. We find that this effect consistently holds only for the closest neighbors, both in terms of distance and age difference. Female students are more likely to be influenced by older neighbors’ choices, and male older neighbors’ admission has a larger impact on both male and female students compared to female older neighbors. The effect is stronger if the student-neighbor pair lives in a region that does not have its own university, implying that the value of information in rural areas is higher. We find evidence that students don’t follow their older neighbors to less competitive programs; instead, they are more likely to apply for the same programs their older neighbors were admitted to when the program is more prestigious. Next, we utilize the variation in weight scheme of Croatia’s college study programs to show evidence, beyond college choices, of how older neighbors affect the human capital formation of their younger peers. The main channel through which we observe this effect is during high school, through specialization in the subjects needed to gain admittance to older neighbors’ college programs. These findings shed light on the intricate dynamics shaping educational decisions and underscores the significant role older neighbors play in guiding younger peers toward specific academic pathways.

Wir untersuchen die kurz- und langfristigen Auswirkungen eines starken Anstiegs chinesischer Importe auf Wahlergebnisse in Europa. Populistische sowie links- und rechtsextreme Parteien gewannen erst viele Jahre nach dem Höhepunkt des China-Schocks bedeutenden Zuwachs an Wählerstimmen. Wir zeigen, dass die Auswirkungen von Importschocks überwiegend zugunsten populistischer Parteien ausfallen. In geringerem Maße profitieren in der kurzen Frist zudem linksextreme Parteien, langfristig hingegen rechtsextreme Parteien. Die Effekte auf das Wahlverhalten sind jedoch moderat und wir schlussfolgern, dass Importschocks den Aufstieg der politischen Ränder nur in begrenztem Maße erklären können.