This paper analyzes whether technological change improves equality of labor market opportunities by decreasing returns to parental background. We find that in Germany during the 1990s, computerization improved the access to technologyadopting occupations for workers with low-educated parents,...

The secular shift in labor demand from unskilled to skilled labor is explained within a model that is solved numerically. There are three branches producing a basic good, a differentiated luxury good, and an intermediate service. Production is more skill-intensive in the luxury good and the...

We develop an assignment model of automation. Each of a continuum of tasks of variable complexity is assigned to either capital or one of a continuum of labor skills. We characterize conditions for interior automation, whereby tasks of intermediate complexity are assigned to capital. Interior...

We investigate how workers adjust to firms’ investments into new digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, augmented reality, or 3D printing. For this, we collected novel data that links survey information on firms’ technology adoption to administrative social security data....

Using data for German and Swedish multinational enterprises (MNEs), this paper assesses international employment patterns. It analyzes determinants of location choice and the degree of substitutability of labor across locations. Countries with highly skilled labor forces attract German MNEs, but...

This paper examines the interactions between employment and training policies. Their effectiveness in stimulating income may be interdependent for various important reasons. For example, the more employment policies stimulate the employment rate, the greater the length of time over which workers...

German social security records involve an indicator for part-time or full-time work. In 2011, the reporting procedure was changed suggesting that a fraction of worker recorded to be working full-time before the change were in fact part-time workers. This study develops a correction based on...

Die Bekämpfung der Arbeitslosigkeit genießt oberste wirtschaftspolitische Priorität - dieser Feststellung wird kaum jemand widersprechen wollen. Eher scheiden sich die Geister an der Frage nach dem "wirklichen" quantitativen Ausmaß der Unterbeschäftigung, ihren Ursachen und welche...

This paper investigates whether and in what sense the west German wage structure has been 'rigid' in the 1990s. To test the hypothesis that a rigid wage structure has been responsible for rising low-skilled unemployment, I propose a methodology which makes less restrictive identifying...