TY - RPRT A1 - Amann, Erwin A1 - Rzepka, Sylvi T1 - The Effect of Goal-Setting Prompts in a Blended Learning Environment BT - Evidence from a Field Experiment T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We investigate how inviting students to set task-based goals affects usage of an online learning platform and course performance. We design and implement a randomized field experiment in a large mandatory economics course with blended learning elements. The low-cost treatment induces students to use the online learning system more often, more intensively, and to begin earlier with exam preparation. Treated students perform better in the course than the control group: they are 18.8% (0.20 SD) more likely to pass the exam and earn 6.7% (0.19 SD) more points on the exam. There is no evidence that treated students spend significantly more time, rather they tend to shift to more productive learning methods. The heterogeneity analysis suggests that higher treatment effects are associated with higher levels of behavioral bias but also with poor early course behavior. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 25 KW - natural field experiment KW - blended learning KW - behavioral economics KW - goal-setting Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-493476 SN - 2628-653X N1 - The trial is registered in the AEA RCT registry, RCT ID AEARCTR-28790 (https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2928-1.0). IS - 25 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Amoroso, Sara A1 - Herrmann, Benedikt A1 - Kritikos, Alexander T1 - The Role of Regulation and Regional Government Quality for High Growth Firms BT - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - High growth firms (HGFs) are important for job creation and considered to be precursors of economic growth. We investigate how formal institutions, like product- and labor-market regulations, as well as the quality of regional governments that implement these regulations, affect HGF development across European regions. Using data from Eurostat, OECD, WEF, and Gothenburg University, we show that both regulatory stringency and the quality of the regional government influence the regional shares of HGFs. More importantly, we find that the effect of labor- and product-market regulations ultimately depends on the quality of regional governments: in regions with high quality of government, the share of HGFs is neither affected by the level of product market regulation, nor by more or less flexibility in hiring and firing practices. Our findings contribute to the debate on the effects of regulations by showing that regulations are not, per se, “good, bad, and ugly”, rather their impact depends on the efficiency of regional governments. Our paper offers important building blocks to develop tailored policy measures that may influence the development of HGFs in a region. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 71 KW - High growth firms KW - Regulation KW - Quality of regional governments KW - Regions Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-612771 SN - 2628-653X IS - 71 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Andres, Maximilian A1 - Bruttel, Lisa Verena A1 - Friedrichsen, Jana T1 - How communication makes the difference between a cartel and tacit collusion BT - a machine learning approach T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - This paper sheds new light on the role of communication for cartel formation. Using machine learning to evaluate free-form chat communication among firms in a laboratory experiment, we identify typical communication patterns for both explicit cartel formation and indirect attempts to collude tacitly. We document that firms are less likely to communicate explicitly about price fixing and more likely to use indirect messages when sanctioning institutions are present. This effect of sanctions on communication reinforces the direct cartel-deterring effect of sanctions as collusion is more difficult to reach and sustain without an explicit agreement. Indirect messages have no, or even a negative, effect on prices. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 53 KW - cartel KW - collusion KW - communication KW - machine learning KW - experiment Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562234 SN - 2628-653X ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Bachelet, Marion A1 - Kalkuhl, Matthias A1 - Koch, Nicolas T1 - What if working from home will stick? BT - Distributional and climate impacts for Germany T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic created the largest experiment in working from home. We study how persistent telework may change energy and transport consumption and costs in Germany to assess the distributional and environmental implications when working from home will stick. Based on data from the German Microcensus and available classifications of working-from-home feasibility for different occupations, we calculate the change in energy consumption and travel to work when 15% of employees work full time from home. Our findings suggest that telework translates into an annual increase in heating energy expenditure of 110 euros per worker and a decrease in transport expenditure of 840 euros per worker. All income groups would gain from telework but high-income workers gain twice as much as low-income workers. The value of time saving is between 1.3 and 6 times greater than the savings from reduced travel costs and almost 9 times higher for high-income workers than low-income workers. The direct effects on CO₂ emissions due to reduced car commuting amount to 4.5 millions tons of CO₂, representing around 3 percent of carbon emissions in the transport sector. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 41 KW - commuting KW - home office KW - COVID-19 KW - energy expenditure KW - carbon emissions Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-532384 SN - 2628-653X IS - 41 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Block, Jörn A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Priem, Maximilian A1 - Stiel, Caroline T1 - Emergency-Aid for Self-employed in the Covid-19 Pandemic BT - A Flash in the Pan? T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - 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. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 55 KW - self-employment KW - emergency-aid KW - treatment effects KW - Covid-19 KW - entrepreneurship policy KW - subjective survival probability Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562688 SN - 2628-653X IS - 55 CY - Potsdam ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Borck, Rainald A1 - Mulder, Peter T1 - Energy policies and pollution in two developing country cities BT - A quantitative model T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We study the effect of energy and transport policies on pollution in two developing country cities. We use a quantitative equilibrium model with choice of housing, energy use, residential location, transport mode, and energy technology. Pollution comes from commuting and residential energy use. The model parameters are calibrated to replicate key variables for two developing country cities, Maputo, Mozambique, and Yogyakarta, Indonesia. In the counterfactual simulations, we study how various transport and energy policies affect equilibrium pollution. Policies may be induce rebound effects from increasing residential energy use or switching to high emission modes or locations. In general, these rebound effects tend to be largest for subsidies to public transport or modern residential energy technology. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 78 KW - pollution KW - energy policy KW - discrete choice KW - developing country cities Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-638472 SN - 2628-653X IS - 78 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Borck, Rainald A1 - Oshiro, Jun A1 - Satō, Yasuhiro T1 - Property tax competition BT - A quantitative assessment T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We develop a model of property taxation and characterize equilibria under three alternative taxa-tion regimes often used in the public finance literature: decentralized taxation, centralized taxation, and “rent seeking” regimes. We show that decentralized taxation results in inefficiently high tax rates, whereas centralized taxation yields a common optimal tax rate, and tax rates in the rent-seeking regime can be either inefficiently high or low. We quantify the effects of switching from the observed tax system to the three regimes for Japan and Germany. The decentralized or rent-seeking regime best describes the Japanese tax system, whereas the centralized regime does so for Germany. We also quantify the welfare effects of regime changes. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 52 KW - property taxes KW - tax competition KW - efficiency Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562228 SN - 2628-653X ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Borck, Rainald A1 - Schrauth, Philipp T1 - Urban pollution BT - A global perspective T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We use worldwide satellite data to analyse how population size and density affect urban pollution. We find that density significantly increases pollution exposure. Looking only at urban areas, we find that population size affects exposure more than density. Moreover, the effect is driven mostly by population commuting to core cities rather than the core city population itself. We analyse heterogeneity by geography and income levels. By and large, the influence of population on pollution is greatest in Asia and middle-income countries. A counterfactual simulation shows that PM2.5 exposure would fall by up to 36% and NO2 exposure up to 53% if within countries population size were equalized across all cities. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 60 KW - population density KW - air pollution KW - gridded data Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-572049 SN - 2628-653X IS - 60 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Bruttel, Lisa Verena A1 - Bulutay, Muhammed A1 - Cornand, Camille A1 - Heinemann, Frank A1 - Zylbersztejn, Adam T1 - Measuring strategic-uncertainty attitudes T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Strategic uncertainty is the uncertainty that players face with respect to the purposeful behavior of other players in an interactive decision situation. Our paper develops a new method for measuring strategic-uncertainty attitudes and distinguishing them from risk and ambiguity attitudes. We vary the source of uncertainty (whether strategic or not) across conditions in a ceteris paribus manner. We elicit certainty equivalents of participating in two strategic 2x2 games (a stag-hunt and a market-entry game) as well as certainty equivalents of related lotteries that yield the same possible payoffs with exogenously given probabilities (risk) and lotteries with unknown probabilities (ambiguity). We provide a structural model of uncertainty attitudes that allows us to measure a preference for or an aversion against the source of uncertainty, as well as optimism or pessimism regarding the desired outcome. We document systematic attitudes towards strategic uncertainty that vary across contexts. Under strategic complementarity [substitutability], the majority of participants tend to be pessimistic [optimistic] regarding the desired outcome. However, preferences for the source of uncertainty are distributed around zero. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 54 KW - risk attitudes KW - ambiguity attitudes KW - strategic-uncertainty attitudes KW - stag-hunt game KW - market-entry game Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-562340 SN - 2628-653X IS - 54 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Bruttel, Lisa Verena A1 - Eisenkopf, Gerald A1 - Nithammer, Juri T1 - Pre-election communication in public good games with endogenous leaders T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Leadership plays an important role for the efficient and fair solution of social dilemmas but the effectiveness of a leader can vary substantially. Two main factors of leadership impact are the ability to induce high contributions by all group members and the (expected) fair use of power. Participants in our experiment decide about contributions to a public good. After all contributions are made, the leader can choose how much of the joint earnings to assign to herself; the remainder is distributed equally among the followers. Using machine learning techniques, we study whether the content of initial open statements by the group members predicts their behavior as a leader and whether groups are able to identify such clues and endogenously appoint a “good” leader to solve the dilemma. We find that leaders who promise fairness are more likely to behave fairly, and that followers appoint as leaders those who write more explicitly about fairness and efficiency. However, in their contribution decision, followers focus on the leader’s first-move contribution and place less importance on the content of the leader’s statements. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 73 KW - leadership KW - public good KW - voting KW - experiment KW - promises Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623952 SN - 2628-653X IS - 73 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. A1 - Pfeifer, Harald A1 - Uhlendorff, Arne A1 - Wehner, Caroline T1 - Managers’ Risk Preferences and Firm Training Investments T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We provide the first estimates of the impact of managers’ risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. Our conceptual framework links managers’ risk preferences to firms’ training decisions through the bonuses they expect to receive. Risk-averse managers are expected to select workers with low turnover risk and invest in specific rather than general training. Empirical evidence supporting these predictions is provided using a novel vignette study embedded in a nationally representative survey of firm managers. Risk-tolerant and risk-averse decision makers have significantly different training preferences. Risk aversion results in increased sensitivity to turnover risk. Managers who are risk-averse offer significantly less general training and, in some cases, are more reluctant to train workers with a history of job mobility. All managers, irrespective of their risk preferences, are sensitive to the investment risk associated with training, avoiding training that is more costly or targets those with less occupational expertise or nearing retirement. This suggests the risks of training are primarily due to the risk that trained workers will leave the firm (turnover risk) rather than the risk that the benefits of training do not outweigh the costs (investment risk). T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 44 KW - Manager Decisions KW - Employee Training KW - Risk Attitudes KW - Human Capital Investments Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-538439 SN - 2628-653X IS - 44 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Graeber, Daniel A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Seebauer, Johannes T1 - Pandemic Depression: COVID-19 and the Mental Health of the Self-Employed T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these differences. In addition, we find larger mental health responses among self-employed women who were directly affected by government-imposed restrictions and bore an increased childcare burden due to school and daycare closures. We also find that self-employed individuals who are more resilient coped better with the crisis. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 46 KW - self-employment KW - COVID-19 KW - mental health KW - gender KW - representative longitudinal survey data KW - PHQ-4 score KW - resilience Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-548999 SN - 2628-653X IS - 46 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Stier, Claudia T1 - The Influence of Start-up Motivation on Entrepreneurial Performance T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis, we examine a broad range of business outcomes including survival and income, as well as job creation, expansion and innovation activities for up to 40 months after business formation. Using self-determination theory as conceptual background, we aggregate the start-up motives into a continuous motivational index. We show – based on a unique dataset of German start-ups from unemployment and non-unemployment – that the later business performance is better, the higher they score on this index. Effects are particularly strong for growth oriented outcomes like innovation and expansion activities. In a next step, we examine three underlying motivational categories that we term opportunity, career ambition, and necessity. We show that individuals driven by opportunity motives perform better in terms of innovation and business expansion activities, while career ambition is positively associated with survival, income, and the probability of hiring employees. All effects are robust to the inclusion of a large battery of covariates that are proven to be important determinants of entrepreneurial performance. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 59 KW - Entrepreneurship KW - Push and Pull Theories KW - Start-up Motivation KW - Survival KW - Job Creation KW - Firm Growth KW - Innovation Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-571152 SN - 2628-653X IS - 59 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Künn, Steffen A1 - Mahlstedt, Robert T1 - The Intended and Unintended Effects of Promoting Labor Market Mobility T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Subsidizing the geographical mobility of unemployed workers may improve welfare by relaxing their financial constraints and allowing them to find jobs in more prosperous regions. We exploit regional variation in the promotion of mobility programs along administrative borders of German employment agency districts to investigate the causal effect of offering such financial incentives on the job search behavior and labor market integration of unemployed workers. We show that promoting mobility – as intended – causes job seekers to increase their search radius, apply for and accept distant jobs. At the same time, local job search is reduced with adverse consequences for reemployment and earnings. These unintended negative effects are provoked by spatial search frictions. Overall, the unconditional provision of mobility programs harms the welfare of unemployed job seekers. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 42 KW - Job Search KW - Active Labor Market Policy KW - Labor Market Mobility KW - Unintended Consequence KW - Search Frictions Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-535229 SN - 2628-653X ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Caliendo, Marco A1 - Tübbicke, Stefan T1 - Design and Effectiveness of Start-Up Subsidies BT - Evidence from a Policy Reform in Germany T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - While a growing body of literature finds positive impacts of Start-Up Subsidies (SUS) on labor market outcomes of participants, little is known about how the design of these programs shapes their effectiveness and hence how to improve policy. As experimental variation in program design is unavailable, we exploit the 2011 reform of the current German SUS program for the unemployed which strengthened case-workers’ discretionary power, increased entry requirements and reduced monetary support. We estimate the impact of the reform on the program’s effectiveness using samples of participants and non-participants from before and after the reform. To control for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity as well as differential selection patterns based on observable characteristics over time, we combine Difference-in-Differences with inverse probability weighting using covariate balancing propensity scores. Holding participants’ observed characteristics as well as macroeconomic conditions constant, the results suggest that the reform was successful in raising employment effects on average. As these findings may be contaminated by changes in selection patterns based on unobserved characteristics, we assess our results using simulation-based sensitivity analyses and find that our estimates are highly robust to changes in unobserved characteristics. Hence, the reform most likely had a positive impact on the effectiveness of the program, suggesting that increasing entry requirements and reducing support in-creased the program’s impacts while reducing the cost per participant. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 30 KW - Start-Up Subsidies KW - Institutions KW - Policy Reform KW - Difference-in-Differences Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-500056 SN - 2628-653X IS - 30 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Estrin, Saul A1 - Khavul, Susanna A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Löher, Jonas T1 - Access to digital finance BT - equity crowdfunding across countries and platforms T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding in terms of the relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised per pitch. We examine heterogeneity in the average amount raised per pitch that is associated with differences across three countries and seven platforms. Using a novel dataset of successful fundraising on the most prominent platforms in the UK, Germany, and the USA, we find the underlying relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised for entrepreneurs is loglinear, with a coefficient less than one and concave to the origin. We identify significant variation in the average amount invested in each pitch across countries and platforms. Our findings have implications for market actors as well as regulators who set competitive frameworks. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 72 KW - equity crowdfunding KW - soft information KW - entrepreneurship KW - finance KW - financial access and inclusion Y1 - 2024 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623261 SN - 2628-653X IS - 72 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Eydam, Ulrich A1 - Diluiso, Francesca T1 - How to Redistribute the Revenues from Climate Policy? BT - A Dynamic Perspective with Financially Constrained Households T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - In light of climate change mitigation efforts, revenues from climate policies are growing, with no consensus yet on how they should be used. Potential efficiency gains from reducing distortionary taxes and the distributional implications of different revenue recycling schemes are currently debated. To account for households heterogeneity and dynamic trade-offs, we study the macroeconomic and welfare performance of different revenue recycling schemes using an Environmental Two-Agent New-Keynesian model, calibrated on the German economy. We find that, in the long run, welfare gains are higher when revenues are used to reduce distortionary taxes on capital, but this comes at the cost of higher inequality: while all households prefer labor income tax reductions to lump-sum transfers, only financially unconstrained households are better off when reducing taxes on capital income. Interestingly, we find that over the transition period relevant to meet short-medium run climate targets, labor income tax cuts are the most efficient and equitable instrument. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 45 KW - double dividend KW - E-DSGE KW - environmental tax reform KW - non-Ricardian households KW - revenue recycling Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-548960 SN - 2628-653X IS - 45 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Franks, Max A1 - Kalkuhl, Matthias A1 - Lessmann, Kai T1 - Optimal Pricing for Carbon Dioxide Removal Under Inter-Regional Leakage T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) moves atmospheric carbon to geological or land-based sinks. In a first-best setting, the optimal use of CDR is achieved by a removal subsidy that equals the optimal carbon tax and marginal damages. We derive second-best subsidies for CDR when no global carbon price exists but a national government implements a unilateral climate policy. We find that the optimal carbon tax differs from an optimal CDR subsidy because of carbon leakage, terms-of-trade and fossil resource rent dynamics. First, the optimal removal subsidy tends to be larger than the carbon tax because of lower supply-side leakage on fossil resource markets. Second, terms-of-trade effects exacerbate this wedge for net resource exporters, implying even larger removal subsidies. Third, the optimal removal subsidy may fall below the carbon tax for resource-poor countries when marginal environmental damages are small. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 43 KW - carbon pricing KW - trade KW - unilateral climate policy KW - terms-of-trade effects KW - removal subsidies Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-538080 SN - 2628-653X IS - 43 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Graeber, Daniel A1 - Hilbert, Viola A1 - König, Johannes T1 - Inequality of Opportunity in Wealth BT - Levels, Trends, and Drivers T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - While inequality of opportunity (IOp) in earnings is well studied, the literature on IOp in individual net wealth is scarce to non-existent. This is problematic because both theoretical and empirical evidence show that the position in the wealth and income distribution can significantly diverge.We measure ex-ante IOp in net wealth for Germany using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Ex-ante IOp is defined as the contribution of circumstances to the inequality in net wealth before effort is exerted. The SOEP allows for a direct mapping from individual circumstances to individual net wealth and for a detailed decomposition of net wealth inequality into a variety of circumstances; among them childhood background, intergenerational transfers, and regional characteristics. The ratio of inequality of opportunity to total inequality is stable from 2002 to 2019. This is in sharp contrast to labor earnings, where ex-ante IOp is declining over time. Our estimates suggest that about 62% of the inequality in net wealth is due to circumstances. The most important circumstances are intergenerational transfers, parental occupation, and the region of birth. In contrast, gender and individuals’ own education are the most important circumstances for earnings. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 69 KW - inequality KW - wealth KW - inequality of opportunity KW - decomposition Y1 - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-609673 SN - 2628-653X IS - 69 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Graeber, Daniel A1 - Kritikos, Alexander A1 - Seebauer, Johannes T1 - COVID-19: a crisis of the female self-employed T2 - CEPA Discussion Papers N2 - We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the government-mandated measures to contain its spread, affect the self-employed – particularly women – in Germany. For our analysis, we use representative, real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings indicate that among the self-employed, who generally face a higher likelihood of income losses due to COVID-19 than employees, women are 35% more likely to experience income losses than their male counterparts. Conversely, we do not find a comparable gender gap among employees. Our results further suggest that the gender gap among the self-employed is largely explained by the fact that women disproportionately work in industries that are more severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our analysis of potential mechanisms reveals that women are significantly more likely to be impacted by government-imposed restrictions, i.e. the regulation of opening hours. We conclude that future policy measures intending to mitigate the consequences of such shocks should account for this considerable variation in economic hardship. T3 - CEPA Discussion Papers - 27 KW - self-employed KW - COVID-19 KW - income KW - gender KW - representative real-time survey data KW - decomposition methods Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-498108 SN - 2628-653X IS - 27 ER -