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This paper considers the role of school closures in the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. To isolate the impact of the closures from other containment measures and identify a causal effect, we exploit variation in the start and end dates of the summer and fall school holidays across the 16 federal states in Germany using a difference-in-differences design with staggered adoption. We show that neither the summer closures nor the closures in the fall had a significant containing effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among children or a spill-over effect on older generations. There is also no evidence that the return to school at full capacity after the summer holidays increased infections among children or adults. Instead, we find that the number of children infected increased during the last weeks of the summer holiday and decreased in the first weeks after schools reopened, a pattern we attribute to travel returnees.

We argue that skill-biased technological change not only affects wage gaps between skill groups, but also increases wage inequality within skill groups, across workers in different workplaces. Building on a heterogeneous firm framework with labor market frictions, we show that an industry-wide skill-biased technological change shock will increase between-firm wage inequality within the industry through four main channels: changes in the skill wage premium (as in traditional models of technological change); increased employment concentration in more productive firms; increased wage dispersion between firms for workers of the same skill type; and increased dispersion in the skill mix that firms employ, due to more sorting of skilled workers to more productive firms. Using rich administrative matched employer-employee data from Germany, we provide empirical evidence of establishment-level patterns that are in line with the predictions of the model. We further document that industries with more technological adoption exhibit particularly pronounced patterns along the dimensions highlighted by the model.

This paper investigates the effects of technological and organizational change (T&O) on jobs and workers. We show that although T&O reduces firm demand for routine relative to abstract task-based jobs, affected workers do not face higher probability of non-employment or lower earnings growth than unaffected workers. Rather, firms that adopt T&O offer routine workers re-training opportunities to upgrade to more abstract jobs. Older workers form an important exception: T&O increases the risk that they permanently withdraw from the labor market and reduces their earnings, regardless of the tasks they performed in the firm prior to T&O.

This paper considers the role of school closures in the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. To isolate the impact of the closures from other containment measures and identify a causal effect, we exploit variation in the start and end dates of the summer school and fall holiday across the 16 federal states in Germany. Leveraging a difference-in-differences design with staggered adoption, we show that neither the summer closures nor the closures in the fall have had any significant containing effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among children or any spill-over effect on older generations. We also do not find any evidence that schools returning to full capacity after the summer holidays increased infections among children or adults. Instead, we find the number of children infected increased during the last weeks of the summer holiday and decreased in the first weeks after schools reopen, a pattern we attribute to travel returnees and increased testing. Diese Studie befasst sich mit der Rolle von Schulschließungen bei der Verbreitung des SARS-CoV-2-Virus. Um die Auswirkungen der Schließungen von anderen Eindämmungsmaßnahmen zu isolieren und einen kausalen Effekt zu identifizieren, nutzen wir die Tatsache, dass die Schulferien in den Bundesländern zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten und unabhängig vom Infektionsgeschehen festgelegt werden. Mit einem Differenz-von-Differenzen-Ansatz ("staggered adoption design") zeigen wir, dass weder der Sommer noch die Schließungen im Herbst einen signifikanten Eindämmungseffekt auf die Ausbreitung von SARS-CoV-2 bei Kindern oder einen Spill-over-Effekt auf ältere Generationen hatten. Wir finden auch keine Hinweise darauf, dass Schulen nach der Rückkehr zum normalen Schulbetrieb nach den Sommerferien die Infektionen bei Kindern oder Erwachsenen erhöht haben. Stattdessen stellen wir fest, dass die Zahl der infizierten Kinder in den letzten Wochen der Sommerferien zunahm und in den ersten Wochen nach der Wiedereröffnung der Schulen zurückging - ein Muster, das wir auf Reiserückkehrer und vermehrte Tests zurückführen.

Does the culture in which a woman grows up influence her labor market decisions once she has had a child? To what extent might the culture of her present social environment shape maternal labor supply? To address these questions, we exploit the setting of German reunification. A state socialist country, East Germany strongly encouraged mothers to participate in the labor market full-time, whereas West Germany propagated a more traditional male breadwinner-model. After reunification, these two cultures were suddenly thrown together, with consequent increased social interactions between East and West Germans through migration and commuting. A comparison of East and West German mothers on both sides of the former Inner German border within the same commuting zone shows that culture matters. Indeed, East German mothers return to work more quickly and for longer hours than West German mothers even two decades after reunification. Second, in exploiting migration across this old border, we document a strong asymmetry in the persistence of the culture in which women were raised. Whereas East German female migrants return to work earlier and work longer hours than their West German colleagues even after long exposure to the more traditional West German culture, West German migrants adjust their post-birth labor supply behavior nearly entirely to that of their East German colleagues. Finally, taking advantage of differential inflows of East German migrants across West German firms in the aftermath of reunification, we show that even a partial exposure to East German colleagues induces 'native' West German mothers to accelerate their return to work after childbirth, suggesting that migration might be a catalyst for cultural change. Werden die Arbeitsmarktentscheidungen von Müttern von der Kultur beeinflusst, in der die Frauen aufgewachsen sind? Und wie wirkt sich das aktuelle soziale Umfeld auf das Arbeitsangebot von Müttern aus? Um diese Fragen zu beantworten, vergleichen wir ost- und westdeutsche Frauen im Kontext der deutschen Wiedervereinigung. Im sozialistischen Osten wurde die Vollzeiterwerbstätigkeit von Müttern forciert, während in Westdeutschland das traditionelle Modell des männlichen Hauptverdieners verbreitet war. Nach der Wiedervereinigung wurden beide Kulturen plötzlich miteinander konfrontiert und dieser Austausch wurde durch die darauffolgenden Migrations-und Pendlerströme weiter verstärkt. Vergleicht man ost- und westdeutsche Mütter entlang der ehemaligen innerdeutschen Grenze innerhalb desselben grenzüberschreitenden lokalen Arbeitsmarktes, zeigt sich, dass Kultur für deren Arbeitsmarktentscheidungen eine entscheidende Rolle spielt. Selbst 20 Jahre nach der Wiedervereinigung kehren ostdeutsche Mütter früher in ihren Beruf zurück und arbeiten mehr Stunden als westdeutsche Mütter. In einem zweiten Schritt betrachten wir ost- und westdeutsche Migrantinnen im jeweils anderen Landesteil und zeigen, dass die ost- und westdeutsche Kindheitskultur unterschiedlich persistent ist. Während ostdeutsche Migrantinnen früher nach der Geburt ihres Kindes in den Beruf zurückkehren und auch mehr Stunden arbeiten als ihre westdeutschen Kolleginnen selbst wenn sie schon lange in der traditionelleren westdeutschen Kultur gelebt haben, passen sich westdeutsche Migrantinnen in ihrem Arbeitsangebot nach der Geburt fast komplett ihren ostdeutschen Kolleginnen an. In einem letzten Schritt nutzen wir aus, dass westdeutsche Firmen unterschiedlich stark von Migrationsströmen von Ost nach West betroffen waren und finden, dass westdeutsche Frauen selbst in ihrem eigenen kulturellen Umfeld durch den Kontakt zu ostdeutschen Frauen ihr Verhalten ändern und früher nach der Geburt ihres Kindes in den Beruf zurückkehren. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass Migration ein Katalysator für kulturellen Wandel sein kann.

By exploiting a commuting policy that led to a sharp and unexpected inflow of Czech workers to areas along the German-Czech border, we examine the impact of an exogenous immigration-induced labor supply shock on local wages and employment of natives. On average, the supply shock leads to a moderate decline in local native wages and a sharp decline in local native employment. These average effects mask considerable heterogeneity across groups: while younger natives experience larger wage effects, employment responses are particularly pronounced for older natives. This pattern is inconsistent with standard models of immigration but can be accounted for by a model that allows for a larger labor supply elasticity or a higher degree of wage rigidity for older than for young workers. We further show that the employment response is almost entirely driven by diminished inflows of natives into work rather than outflows into other areas or non-employment, suggesting that "outsiders" shield "insiders" from the increased competition.

This paper provides an introduction into the estimation of Marginal Treatment Effects (MTE). Compared to the existing surveys on the subject, our paper is less technical and speaks to the applied economist with a solid basic understanding of econometric techniques who would like to use MTE estimation. Our framework of analysis is a generalized Roy model based on the potential outcomes framework, within which we define different treatment effects of interest, and review the well-known case of IV estimation with a discrete instrument resulting in a local average treatment effect (LATE). Turning to IV estimation with a continuous instrument we demonstrate that the 2SLS estimator may be viewed as a weighted average of LATEs, and discuss MTE estimation as an alternative and more informative way of exploiting a continuous instrument. We clarify the assumptions underlying the MTE framework and illustrate how the MTE estimation is implemented in practice.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of refugee migration, with emphasis on the current refugee crisis. After first reviewing the institutional framework laid out by the Geneva Convention for Refugees, we demonstrate that, despite numerous attempts at developing a common European asylum policy, EU countries continue to differ widely in interpretation and implementation. We then describe key features of the current refugee crisis and document the overall magnitudes and types of refugee movements, illegal border crossings, and asylum applications to EU member states. We next turn to the economics of refugee migrations, contrasting economic and refugee migrants, discussing the trade-offs between long-term asylum and temporary protection, and highlighting the economic advantages of increasingly coordinating the different national asylum policies. Finally, we illustrate the economic integration of past refugee migrants to EU countries and conclude with several policy recommendations.

Governments are often willing to subsidize firms on the verge of bankruptcy. The main economic rationale behind these interventions is that a plant closure would not only harm the workers employed in that plant, but create a domino effect on the regional economy as a whole. Yet, little is still known empirically how important these spillover effects are for economic development in the region. In this paper, we use administrative data of all workers and firms in Germany to quantify the spillover effects of mass layoffs. For the empirical analysis, we combine a difference-in-differences estimator with an event-study approach. We find sizeable negative spillover effects on the regional economy: regions, and especially firms producing in the same sector as the firm hit by a mass layoff, lose many more jobs than in the initial layoff. In contrast, we find few negative effects for workers employed (but not directly affected by the layoff) in the region. As such, mass layoffs seem to have negative spillovers locally, but not nationally.

Despite its efficiency in tailoring education to the needs of students, a tracking system has the inherent problem of misallocating students to tracks because of incomplete information at the time of the tracking decision. This paper investigates the effects of attending a more advanced track in middle school on long-term education and labor market outcomes for Germany, a country with a very rigorous tracking system where the risk of misallocating students to tracks is, due to the early age at which tracking takes place, particularly high. Our research design exploits quasi-random shifts between tracks induced by date of birth, and identifies the long-term effects of early track attendance for a group of marginal students most at risk of misallocation. Remarkably, we find no evidence that for these students, attending a more advanced track leads to more favorable long-term outcomes. We attribute this result to the up- and downgrading of students between tracks after middle school when more information about their potential is available. Overall, our findings underscore that flexibilities built into a tracking system, which allow students to revise initial track choices at a later stage, effectively remedy even a prolonged exposure to a less advanced school environment.