Firm training is widely regarded as crucial for protecting workers from automation, yet there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this belief. Using internationally harmonized data from over 90,000 workers across 37 industrialized countries, we construct an individual-level measure of automation risk based on tasks performed at work. Our analysis reveals substantial within-occupation variation in automation risk, overlooked by existing occupation-level measures. To assess whether firm training mitigates automation risk, we exploit within-occupation and within-industry variation. Additionally, we employ entropy balancing to re-weight workers without firm training based on a rich set of background characteristics, including tested numeracy skills as a proxy for unobserved ability. We find that training reduces workers’ automation risk by 3.8 percentage points, equivalent to 8% of the average automation risk. The training-induced reduction in automation risk accounts for 15% of the wage returns to firm training. Firm training is effective in reducing automation risk and increasing wages across nearly all countries, underscoring the external validity of our findings. Training is similarly effective across gender, age, and education groups, suggesting widely shared benefits rather than gains concentrated in specific demographic segments.

A distinctive aspect of the recent financial crises is that they emerged primarily in the industrial world. Since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis emerging countries have been therefore confronted with financial shocks triggered at the core of the international financial system, affecting the volatility of capital flows worldwide. Emerging countries’ dependence on capital and trade flows, combined with a large presence of foreign-owned banks, has been identified as a central driver of the cross-border transmission of these crises (see IMF, 2009). While historical events such as the Latin American debt crisis or the 1997 Asian financial crisis highlighted the importance of sound balance of payments and inflation targeting policies at the macroeconomic level, the global financial crisis has revealed the importance of weighing the costs and benefits of banking globalization. This is foremost important from a policy perspective, since emerging countries faced for the first time in decades an external shock in a context free of large local macroeconomic imbalances, having to adapt their traditional policy framework to new challenges. This has been emphasized, among others, by the former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke. In particular, this changing scenario implied that microeconomic aspects involved in the cross-border transmission of shocks gained increasing momentum in the international policy debate (see for instance Freixas et al., 2015).

The contribution of this thesis is to widen the focus of the literature on related variety. So far, this line of research has a strong focus on technological relatedness and cognitive proximity (Boschma et al. 2015). This thesis puts emphasis on three dimensions of relatedness that not yet been at the heart of research: input-output linkages and vertically related variety, the occupational dimensions of relatedness as well as insights from a project level R&D efforts and their relevance for the analysis of technological relatedness. We contribute to the understanding of how the specific composition and the degree of relatedness of economic agents in space shape their ability to generate variety in terms of entry of new occupational specialisations in regions. We enhance the understanding of how related variety affects different regional outcomes such employment growth and innovation and offer insights into the structure of inter-industry relations from a technological perspective and explains how the rise of certain technologies shapes inter-industry relatedness patterns.

This study employs bilateral data on external assets to examine the impact of climate policies on the reallocation of international capital. We find that the stringency of climate policy in the destination country is significantly and positively associated with an increase in the allocation of portfolio equity and banking investment to that country. However, it does not show significant effects on the allocation of foreign direct investment and portfolio debt. Our findings are not driven by valuation effects, and we present evidence that suggests diversification, suasion, and uncertainty mitigation as possible underlying mechanisms.

Firm training is widely regarded as crucial for protecting workers from automation, yet there is a lack of empirical evidence to support this belief. Using internationally harmonized data from over 90,000 workers across 37 industrialized countries, we construct an individual-level measure of automation risk based on tasks performed at work. Our analysis reveals substantial within-occupation variation in automation risk, overlooked by existing occupation-level measures. To assess whether firm training mitigates automation risk, we exploit within-occupation and within-industry variation. Additionally, we employ entropy balancing to re-weight workers without firm training based on a rich set of background characteristics, including tested numeracy skills as a proxy for unobserved ability. We find that training reduces workers’ automation risk by 3.8 percentage points, equivalent to 8% of the average automation risk. The training-induced reduction in automation risk accounts for 15% of the wage returns to firm training. Firm training is effective in reducing automation risk and increasing wages across nearly all countries, underscoring the external validity of our findings. Training is similarly effective across gender, age, and education groups, suggesting widely shared benefits rather than gains concentrated in specific demographic segments.

Die Dissertation untersucht drei verschiedene geld- bzw. fiskalpolitische Fragestellungen im Rahmen von geschätzten dynamischen stochastischen allgemeinen Gleichgewichtsmodellen (DSGE-Modellen). Zum einen wird mittels eines Markov-Regimewechsel-Modells analysiert, inwiefern sich die Geldpolitik in der Tschechischen Republik, Polen und Ungarn im Zuge des Strategiewechsels zu einer direkten Inflationssteuerung de facto verändert hat und wie erfolgreich sich die neue Strategie im Hinblick auf die Stabilisierung von Zielvariablen erwiesen hat. Weiterhin wird die geschätzte gegenwärtige Geld- und Währungspolitik in Russland hinsichtlich der Auswirkungen simultan auftretender Ölpreis- und Kapitalflussschocks gegenüber Politikalternativen bewertet. Abschließend wird analysiert, ob und inwiefern die Maßnahmen der deutschen Konjunkturpakete während der Großen Rezession zur Stabilisierung der Konjunktur beigetragen haben.

The collapse of the communist system has initiated the transformation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries from a social-planned towards a market economy. The institutional transition, structural change and privatization process evolved at a different extent across CEE countries. The former satellite states implemented a rapid transformation of the economic system and joined the European Union (EU), whereas the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) faced severe difficulties in adapting their system to the new environment. Due to the lack of capital and knowledge, foreign direct investment (FDI) has played a crucial role in the process of technological renewal and economic development. This thesis consists of two research objectives; the location decision of multinational enterprises (MNE) in CEE regions and the impact of FDI in host economies. This thesis is based on firm level information and takes three theoretical frameworks on FDI into account: International Economics, Regional Economics and International Business. Taking the different transition paths of CEE countries into account, the findings suggest that the regional distribution of FDI differs across sectors and is affected by agglomeration economies and by the access to locally bounded inputs. Therefore, FDI amplifies the concentration of economic activities. The investigation of FDI spillovers provides evidence that FDI contributes to the competitiveness of domestic firms in CEE economies. Notwithstanding, the results show that local firms only benefit from FDI if foreign affiliates are sufficiently embedded in the host economy and global production networks.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of mandatory face mask usage triggered a heated debate. A major point of controversy is whether community use of masks creates a false sense of security that would diminish physical distancing, counteracting any potential direct benefit from masking. We conducted a randomized field experiment in Berlin, Germany, to investigate how masks affect distancing and whether the mask effect interacts with the introduction of an indoor mask mandate. Joining waiting lines in front of stores, we measured distances kept from the experimenter in two treatment conditions – the experimenter wore a mask in one and no face covering in the other – in two time spans – before and after mask use becoming mandatory in stores. We find no evidence that mandatory masking has a negative effect on distance kept toward a masked person. To the contrary, masks significantly increase distancing and the effect does not differ between the two periods. However, we show that after the mandate distances are shorter in locations where more non-essential stores, which were closed before the mandate, had reopened. We argue that the relaxations in general restrictions that coincided with the mask mandate led individuals to reduce other precautions, like keeping a safe distance.