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This thesis contributes to the understanding of the labor market effects of international trade, with a focus on the effects on wage and earnings inequality. The thesis draws on high-quality micro data and applies modern econometric techniques and theoretical concepts to improve our understanding of the distributional effects of international trade. The thesis focuses on the effects in Germany and the USA.
This dissertation investigates selected causes and effects of worker mobility between firms in three empirical studies for Germany. Chapter 2 investigates the productivity effects of worker inflows to manufacturing establishments, distinguishing inflows by their previous employers’ wage level, as a proxy for productivity. The chapter is motivated by several empirical studies which find that worker inflows from more productive or higher-paying firms increase hiring firms’ productivity. The analyses in chapter 2 are based on a unique linked employer-employee data set. The findings indicate that inflows from higher-paying establishments do not increase hiring establishments’ productivity, but inflows from lower-paying establishments do. Further analyses suggest that this effect is due to a positive selectivity of such inflows from their sending establishments. These findings can be interpreted as evidence of a reallocation process by which the best employees of lower-paying establishments become hired by higher-paying establishments. This process reflects the assortative pattern of worker mobility in Germany documented by Card et al. (2013) for the past decades. The chapter thus contributes to the literature by linking establishment-level productivity analysis to the assortative pattern of inter-firm worker mobility, thereby providing a micro-foundation for the latter.
Chapter 3 focuses on a positive selection of workers moving between firms from another, more specific perspective. The analysis focuses on the importance of regional labor market competition for establishments’ apprentice training and poaching of apprenticeship completers. Previous studies have found that firms provide less training if they are located in regions with strong labor market competition. This finding is usually interpreted as evidence of a higher risk of poaching in these regions. Yet, there is no direct evidence that regional competition is positively correlated with poaching. Building on a recently established approach to ex-post identify poaching of apprenticeship completers, this chapter is the first to directly investigate the correlation between regional labor market competition and poaching. Using German administrative data, it is found that competition indeed increases training establishments’ probability of becoming poaching victims. However, poaching victims do not change their apprenticeship training activity in reaction to poaching. Instead, the findings indicate that the lower training activity in competitive regions can be attributed to lower retention rates, as well as a less adverse selection and lower labor and hiring costs of apprenticeship completers hired from rivals.
Chapter 4 investigates the effects of local broadband internet availability on establishment-level employment growth. The analysis uses data for Germany in the years 2005-2009, when broadband was introduced in rural regions of Western Germany and in large parts of Eastern Germany. Technical frictions in broadband rollout are exploited to obtain exogenous variation in local broadband availability. The results suggest that broadband expansion had a positive effect on employment growth in the Western German service sector and a negative effect in Western German manufacturing, suggesting that broadband expansion has accelerated the reallocation of workers from manufacturing to services. Furthermore, this pattern of results is driven by pronounced positive effects in knowledge- and computer-intensive industries, suggesting that it is the actual use of broadband in the production process that leads to complementary hiring, respectively a slowdown of employment growth, in the respective sectors. For Eastern Germany, no significant employment growth effects are found.
Untersuchungsgegenstand dieser Arbeit sind die Wirkungen flexibler Entgeltkomponenten (Leistungslohn, Erfolgsbeteiligung, Kapitalbeteiligung) auf der betriebs- und volkswirtschaftlichen Ebene. Ausgangspunkt ist dabei die Analyse der herrschenden Arbeitslosigkeit im Hinblick auf die Ursachen und die Gründe ihrer Verfestigung und Persistenz. Dabei wird festgestellt, dass die existierende Arbeitslosigkeit über verschiedene Theorien erklärt und in mehrere Bestandteile zerlegt werden kann. Ein erheblicher Teil der Arbeitslosigkeit kann auf unflexible, überhöhte Reallöhne zurückgeführt werden. Unterschiedliche Einflüsse verhindern dann ein Absinken des Lohnniveaus auf ein vollbeschäftigungskonformes Niveau. Strukturelle Ursachen, i. S. v. Fehlentwicklungen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und ungenügenden Anpassungskapazitäten an veränderte Rahmenbedingungen sind eine weitere Begründung für die hohe und nachhaltige Arbeitslosigkeit. Entgelte, die in ihrer Höhe und in ihrer sektoralen, regionalen und berufsbezogenen Ausrichtungen flexibel sind, können einen maßgeblichen Beitrag zum Abbau dieser Arbeitslosigkeit leisten. Aufbauend auf diese volkswirtschaftlichen Ansatz werden im folgenden Kapitel wesentliche betriebswirtschaftlichen Aspekte aus Sicht von Unternehmern und Arbeitnehmer dargestellt. Auf diesen Grundlagen aufbauend werden 3 Formen der Entgeltflexibilisierung im Hinblick auf ihre gesamt- und betriebswirtschaftlichen Wirkungen betrachtet. Leistungslöhne orientieren sich entweder am quantitativ messbaren Output oder der qualitativen Arbeitsbewertung eines Arbeitnehmers. Sie tragen somit unmittelbar zu einer produktivitätsorientierten Entlohnung bei, mit positiven Effekten für Unternehmen und Gesamtwirtschaft. Seit Martin Weitzman‘s kontrovers diskutierter "Beteiligungsgesellschaft" werden Erfolgsbeteiligungen als ein Weg gesehen um Arbeitslosigkeit abzubauen. Von der Verbindung zwischen Unternehmenserfolg und Entlohnung profitieren Arbeitnehmer, Unternehmen und Arbeitslose. Kapitalbeteiligungen haben keinen direkten Einfluss auf die Arbeitslosigkeit. Indirekt tragen sie jedoch zur erhöhter Motivation und Identifikation in den Unternehmen bei. Auch die Bereitstellung von Kapital kann je nach Modell Arbeitsplätze sichern. Neben diesen drei Hauptformen werden auch Investivlöhne und Aktienoptionen als Wege der Flexibilisierung betrachtet. Dabei war festzustellen, Investivlöhne (zur Überwindung des Eigenkapitalmangels vieler Unternehmen) analoge Wirkungen zu Erfolgs- und Kapitalbeteiligung aufweist. Aktienoptionen hingegen betreffen in der Regel nur kleiner Gruppen von Arbeitnehmern und Führungskräften. Ein letztes Kapitel zeigt die Gestaltung eines optimalen Entgeltsystems. Dieses weist neben einen Grundentgelt, einen Leistungslohn sowie eine Erfolgsbeteiligung auf, die durch eine optionale Kapitalbeteiligung ergänzt werden können. Dabei wird noch einmal betont, dass eine flexiblere Gestaltung von Entgelten keine alleinige Lösung der Arbeitslosigkeit bietet. Vielmehr müssen strukturelle Reformen, die die Machtstrukturen am Arbeitsmarkt, die Höhe und Ausgestaltung der Lohnersatzleistungen sowie die Stärkung des Wirtschaftswachstums mit der Flexibilisierung Hand in Hand gehen.
This dissertation is concerned with the empirical investigation of the link between globalization and labor market outcomes as well as the determinants of governmental redistribution, with a special focus on the effects of culture and diversity on the welfare state. In recent years, globalization has been criticized for adverse structural effects, e.g. increasing employment volatility and higher inequality.
Following the introduction, the second chapter investigates the relationship between growing import penetration and manufacturing employment growth in 12 OECD countries between 1995 and 2011, accounting for various model specifications, different measures of import penetration, and alternative estimation strategies. The application of the latest version of the World Input-Output Database (WIOD), which has only recently become available, enables measurement of the effect of increases in imported intermediates according to their country of origin. The findings emphasize a weak positive overall impact of growing trade on manufacturing employment. However, while intermediate inputs from China and the new EU members are substitutes for manufacturing employment in highly developed countries, imports from the EU-27 complement domestic manufacturing production. The three-level mixed model utilized implies that the hierarchical structure of the data plays only a minor role, and controlling for endogeneity leaves the results unchanged.
The findings point to ambiguous effects of globalization on labor market outcomes which increase the demand for equalizing public policies. Accordingly, the following chapter examines the relationship between income inequality and redistribution, accounting for the shape of the income distribution, different development levels, and subjective perceptions. Cross-national inequality datasets that have become available only recently allow for the assessment of the link for various sample compositions and several model specifications. The empirical results confirm the Meltzer-Richard hypothesis, but suggest that the relationship between market inequality and redistribution is even stronger when using perceived inequality measures. The findings emphasize a decisive role of the middle class, while also identifying a negative impact of top incomes. The Meltzer-Richard effect is less pronounced in developing economies with less sophisticated political rights, illustrating that it is the political channel through which higher inequality translates into more redistribution.
Chapter (4) extends the framework developed in the preceding chapter by studying the effects of culture and diversity on governmental redistribution for a large sample of countries. To disentangle culture from institutions, the analysis employs regional instruments as well as data on linguistic differences, the frequency of blood types, and the prevalence of the pathogen Toxoplasma Gondii. Redistribution is higher in countries with (1) loose family ties and individualistic attitudes, (2) a high prevalence of trust and tolerance, (3) low acceptance of unequally distributed power and obedience, and (4) a prevalent belief that success is the result of luck and connections. Apart from their direct effects, these traits also exert an indirect impact by influencing the transmission of inequality to redistribution. Finally, the findings indicate that redistribution and diversity in terms of culture, ethnic groups, and religion stand in a non-linear relationship, where moderate levels of diversity impede redistribution and higher levels offset the generally negative effect.
As opposed to general expectation and perception, doctoral graduates do not necessarily strive for or realize the ideal-typical academic career. In many Western countries, career opportunities and paths for doctoral graduates have diversified, and academia is not their only occupational destination, with a large proportion leaving academia to work in public service, in companies’ research and development departments, or in non-profit organizations. Against this background, this thesis examines postdoctoral careers by means of the midterm occupational destinations and professional success among doctoral graduates in the academic and non-academic labour markets in Germany. With regard to occupational destinations, I investigate where doctoral graduates are employed following graduation and how their occupational destinations can be explained. With regard to professional success, I investigate various objective and subjective success indicators related to the returns to doctoral degrees — such as earnings, management positions, and job satisfaction — and systematically include the graduates’ occupational destinations in the analyses. I also consider social inequalities regarding both research topics.