@article{BertschekBlockKritikosetal.2023,
  author    = {Bertschek, Irene and Block, Joern and Kritikos, Alexander and Stiel, Caroline},
  title     = {German financial state aid during Covid-19 pandemic},
  series = {Entrepreneurship \& regional development},
  volume    = {36},
  journal   = {Entrepreneurship \& regional development},
  number    = {1-2},
  publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
  address   = {London},
  issn      = {0898-5626},
  doi       = {10.1080/08985626.2023.2196267},
  pages     = {76 -- 97},
  year      = {2023},
  abstract  = {In response to strong revenue and income losses facing a large share of self-employed individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency-aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact of this program on the confidence to survive the crisis. We investigate how the digitalization level of self-employed individuals influences the program's effectiveness. Employing propensity score matching, we find that the emergency-aid program had only moderately positive effects on the confidence of self-employed to survive the crisis. However, self-employed whose businesses were highly digitalized, benefitted much more from the state aid than those whose businesses were less digitalized. This only holds true for those self-employed, who started the digitalization processes already before the crisis. Taking a regional perspective, we find suggestive evidence that the quality of the regional broadband infrastructure matters in the sense that it increases the effectiveness of the emergency-aid program. Our findings show the interplay between governmental support programs, the digitalization levels of entrepreneurs, and the regional digital infrastructure. The study helps public policy to improve the impact of crisis-related policy instruments, ultimately increasing the resilience of small firms in times of crises.},
  language  = {en}
}
@techreport{BlockKritikosPriemetal.2022,
  type      = {Working Paper},
  author    = {Block, J{\"o}rn and Kritikos, Alexander and Priem, Maximilian and Stiel, Caroline},
  title     = {Emergency-Aid for Self-employed in the Covid-19 Pandemic},
  series = {CEPA Discussion Papers},
  journal   = {CEPA Discussion Papers},
  number    = {55},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  issn      = {2628-653X},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-56268},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562688},
  pages     = {41},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The self-employed faced strong income losses during the Covid-19 pandemic. Many governments introduced programs to financially support the self-employed during the pandemic, including Germany. The German Ministry for Economic Affairs announced a €50bn emergency-aid program in March 2020, offering one-off lump-sum payments of up to €15,000 to those facing substantial revenue declines. By reassuring the self- employed that the government 'would not let them down' during the crisis, the program had also the important aim of motivating the self-employed to get through the crisis. We investigate whether the program affected the confidence of the self-employed to survive the crisis using real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations. We employ propensity score matching, making use of a rich set of variables that influence the subjective survival probability as main outcome measure. We observe that this program had significant effects, with the subjective survival probability of the self- employed being moderately increased. We reveal important effect heterogeneities with respect to education, industries, and speed of payment. Notably, positive effects only occur among those self-employed whose application was processed quickly. This suggests stress-induced waiting costs due to the uncertainty associated with the administrative processing and the overall pandemic situation. Our findings have policy implications for the design of support programs, while also contributing to the literature on the instruments and effects of entrepreneurship policy interventions in crisis situations.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Mahlstedt2017,
  author    = {Mahlstedt, Robert},
  title     = {Essays on job search behavior and labor market policies},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-397081},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {252},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Persistently high unemployment rates are a major threat to the social cohesion in many societies. To moderate the consequences of unemployment industrialized countries spend substantial shares of their GDP on labor market policies, while in recent years there has been a shift from passive measures, such as transfer payments, towards more activating elements which aim to promote the reintegration into the labor market. Although, there exists a wide range of evidence about the effects of traditional active labor market policies (ALMP) on participants' subsequent labor market outcomes, a deeper understanding of the impact of these programs on the job search behavior and the interplay with long-term labor market outcomes is necessary. This allows policy makers to improve the design of labor market policies and the allocation of unemployed workers into specific programs. Moreover, previous studies have shown that many traditional ALMP programs, like public employment or training schemes, do not achieve the desired results. This underlines the importance of understanding the effect mechanisms, but also the need to develop innovative programs that are more effective. This thesis extends the existing literature with respect to several dimensions. First, it analyzes the impact of job seekers' beliefs about upcoming ALMPs programs on the effectiveness of realized treatments later during the unemployment spell. This provides important insights with respect to the job search process and relates potential anticipation effects (on the job seekers behavior before entering a program) to the vast literature evaluating the impact of participating in an ALMP program on subsequent outcomes. The empirical results show that training programs are more effective if the participants expect participation ex ante, while expected treatment effects are unrelated to the actual labor market outcomes of participants. A subsequent analysis of the effect mechanisms shows that job seekers who expect to participate also receive more information by their caseworker and show a higher willingness to adjust their search behavior in association with an upcoming ALMP program. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of training programs can be improved by providing more detailed information about the possibility of a future treatment early during the unemployment spell. Second, the thesis investigates the effects of a relatively new class of programs that aim to improve the geographical mobility of unemployed workers with respect to the job search behavior, the subsequent job finding prospects and the returns to labor market mobility. To estimate the causal impact of these programs, it is exploited that local employment agencies have a degree of autonomy when deciding about the regional-specific policy mix. The findings show that the policy style of the employment agency indeed affects the job search behavior of unemployed workers. Job seekers who are assigned to agencies with higher preferences for mobility programs increase their search radius without affecting the total number of job applications. This shift of the search effort to distant regions leads to a higher probability to find a regular job and higher wages. Moreover, it is shown that participants in one of the subsidy programs who move to geographically distant region a earn significantly higher wages, end up in more stable jobs and face a higher long-run employment probability compared to non-participants. Third, the thesis offers an empirical assessment of the unconfoundedness assumption with respect to the relevance of variables that are usually unobserved in studies evaluating ALMP programs. A unique dataset that combines administrative records and survey data allows us to observe detailed information on typical covariates, as well as usually unobserved variables including personality traits, attitudes, expectations, intergenerational information, as well as indicators about social networks and labor market flexibility. The findings show that, although our set of usually unobserved variables indeed has a significant effect on the selection into ALMP programs, the overall impact when estimating treatment effects is rather small. Finally, the thesis also examines the importance of gender differences in reservation wages that allows assessing the importance of special ALMP programs targeting women. In particular, when including reservation wages in a wage decomposition exercise, the gender gap in realized wages becomes small and statistically insignificant. The strong connection between gender differences in reservation wages and realized wages raises the question how these differences in reservation wages are set in the first place. Since traditional covariates cannot sufficiently explain the gender gap in reservation wages, we perform subgroup analysis to better understand what the driving forces behind this gender gap are.},
  language  = {en}
}