Fertility in the US exhibits an increasingly more procyclical pattern. We argue that women's breadwinner status is behind procyclical fertility: (i) women's relative income in the family has increased over time; and (ii) women are more likely to work in relatively stable and countercyclical...

This paper estimates the direct effects of investment tax credits on firms' production behavior and the additional indirect effects arising from agglomeration economies. Exploiting a change in tax credit rates by firm size in Germany, I find that manufacturing firms increase capital and...

With the Russian war against Ukraine, global economic conditions changed abruptly. We provide first causal evidence of effects of the energy crisis on Germany as Europe's most important economy. Combining cost structure data, national accounts and administrative labour market data, we identify...

This paper exploits a reform that facilitated the recognition of foreign occupational qualifications for non-EU immigrants in Germany. Using detailed administrative social security and survey data in a dfference-in-differences design, we find that the reform increased the share of non-EU...

Even though women have been able to increase their participation in management positions to a small extent in recent years, they are still significantly underrepresented in management positions. Organisational measures to promote gender equality and work-life balance are seen as an option to...

Short-time work (STW) in Germany allows for a lot of flexibility in actual usage. Ex ante, firms notify the Federal Employment Agency about the total number of employees eligible, and, up to the total granted, firms can flexibly choose how many employees actually use STW. In firm-level surveys,...

We examine how firms adapt their organization when they go public. To conform with the requirements of public capital markets, we expect IPO firms to become more organized, making the firm more accountable and its human capital more easily replaceable. We find that IPO firms transform into a...

We study the long-term impact of job displacement on workers' commuting behavior. Our measures of commuting exploit geo-coordinates of workers' places of residence and places of work, from which we calculate the door-to-door commuting distance and commuting time. Using German employee-employer...

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions in international trade and has raised concerns about adverse effects on international supply chains. Using a unique establishment survey matched with administrative data from Germany, we provide novel evidence on how establishments have adjusted...

We study a set of hypothetical reforms of child benefits in Germany, using a static tax-benefit microsimulation model augmented with endogenous labour supply and take-up choices (IAB-MSM). We distinguish between a reform of the universal non-means-tested child benefit, a reform of the...