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”Thanks in Advance”
(2019)
This paper studies the effect of the commonly used phrase “thanks in advance” on compliance with a small request. In a controlled laboratory experiment we ask participants to give a detailed answer to an open question. The treatment variable is whether or not they see the phrase “thanks in advance.” Our participants react to the treatment by exerting less effort in answering the request even though they perceive the phrase as polite.
Against the background of the increasingly discussed “Linguistic Saving Hypothesis” (Chen, 2013), I studied whether the targeted use of a present tense (close tense) and a future tense (distant tense) within the same language have an impact on intertemporal decision-making. In a monetarily incentivized laboratory experiment in Germany, I implemented two different treatments on intertemporal choices. The treatments differed in the tense in which I referred to future rewards. My results show that individuals prefer to a greater extent rewards which are associated with a present tense (close tense). This result is in line with my prediction and the first empirical support for the Linguistic Saving Hypothesis within one language. However, this result holds exclusively for males. Females seem to be unaffected by the linguistic manipulation. I discuss my findings in the context of “gender-as-culture” as well as their potential policy-implications.
Leveraging two cohort-specific pension reforms, this paper estimates the forward-looking effects of an exogenous increase in the working horizon on (un)employment behaviour for individuals with a long remaining statutory working life. Using difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity approaches based on administrative and survey data, I show that a longer legal working horizon increases individuals’ subjective expectations about the length of their work life, raises the probability of employment, decreases the probability of unemployment, and increases the intensity of job search among the unemployed. Heterogeneity analyses show that the demonstrated employment effects are strongest for women and in occupations with comparatively low physical intensity, i.e., occupations that can be performed at older ages.
We analyze the impact of women’s managerial representation on the gender pay gap among employees on the establishment level using German Linked-Employer-Employee-Data from the years 2004 to 2018. For identification of a causal effect we employ a panel model with establishment fixed effects and industry-specific time dummies. Our results show that a higher share of women in management significantly reduces the gender pay gap within the firm. An increase in the share of women in first-level management e.g. from zero to above 33 percent decreases the adjusted gender pay gap from a baseline of 15 percent by 1.2 percentage points, i.e. to roughly 14 percent. The effect is stronger for women in second-level than first-level management, indicating that women managers with closer interactions with their subordinates have a higher impact on the gender pay gap than women on higher management levels. The results are similar for East and West Germany, despite the lower gender pay gap and more gender egalitarian social norms in East Germany. From a policy perspective, we conclude that increasing the number of women in management positions has the potential to reduce the gender pay gap to a limited extent. However, further policy measures will be needed in order to fully close the gender gap in pay.
What Makes an Employer?
(2019)
As the policy debate on entrepreneurship increasingly centers on firm growth in terms of job creation, it is important to better understand which variables influence the first hiring decision and which ones influence the subsequent survival as an employer. Using the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP), we analyze what role individual characteristics of entrepreneurs play in sustainable job creation. While human and social capital variables positively influence the hiring decision and the survival as an employer in the same direction, we show that none of the personality traits affect the two outcomes in the same way. Some traits are only relevant for survival as an employer but do not influence the hiring decision, other traits even unfold a revolving door effect, in the sense that employers tend to fail due to the same characteristics that positively influenced their hiring decision.
What is it good for?
(2023)
Military conflicts and wars affect a country’s development in various dimensions. Rising inflation rates are a potentially important economic effect associated with conflict. High inflation can undermine investment, weigh on private consumption, and threaten macroeconomic stability. Furthermore, these effects are not necessarily restricted to the locality of the conflict, but can also spill over to other countries. Therefore, to understand how conflict affects the economy and to make a more comprehensive assessment of the costs of armed conflict, it is important to take inflationary effects into account. To disentangle the conflict-inflation-nexus and to quantify this relationship, we conduct a panel analysis for 175 countries over the period 1950–2019. To capture indirect inflationary effects, we construct a distance based spillover index. In general, the results of our analysis confirm a statistically significant positive direct association between conflicts and inflation rates. This finding is robust across various model specifications. Moreover, our results indicate that conflict induced inflation is not solely driven by increasing money supply. Furthermore, we document a statistically significant positive indirect association between conflicts and inflation rates in uninvolved countries.
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.
The paper describes the exchange program in between the University of Wisconsin/ Milwaukee and the University of Potsdam in the field of economics. It discusses in detail the development of the program, including the problems and challenges. Additionally a brief description of the curriculum is presented. Then the future possibilities of the Transatlantic Degree Program (TDP) are discussed and the influences and problems of the Bologna process analysed.
Urban pollution
(2022)
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.