0000000000140838
AUTHOR
Thorsten Schank
showing 9 related works from this author
Do foreign workers reduce trade barriers? Microeconomic evidence
2015
This paper provides evidence that foreign workers reduce firms' trade costs and thus increase the probability that firms export. This informs both the literature on trade costs and the microeconomic literature on firms' export behaviour. We identify the nationality of each worker in a large sample of German establishments, and relate this to the exporting behaviour of these establishments. We allow for the possible endogeneity of an establishment's workforce by instrumenting the share of foreign workers with the regional distribution of foreign workers in the wider labour market. We find a significant effect of worker nationality on exporting which is not driven by the industrial, occupatio…
Does the plant size–wage differential increase with tenure? Affirming evidence from German panel data
2015
We show that the major part of the plant size–wage premium in Germany is reflected in different wage growth patterns in plants of different size. This is consistent with the hypothesis that large firms ‘produce’ more skilled workers over time.
High Wage Workers Match with High Wage Firms: Clear Evidence of the Effects of Limited Mobility Bias
2012
Positive assortative matching implies that high productivity workers and firms match together. However, there is almost no evidence of a positive correlation between the worker and firm contributions in two-way fixed-effects wage equations. This could be the result of a bias caused by standard estimation error. Using German social security records we show that the effect of this bias is substantial in samples with limited inter-firm movement. The correlation between worker and firm contributions to wage equations is unambiguously positive.
Foreign-owned firms around the world: A comparative analysis of wages and employment at the micro-level
2013
Abstract This paper provides the first microeconomic cross-country analysis of the effects of foreign ownership on wages, employment and worker turnover rates. Using firm-level and linked worker-firm data, we apply a standardised methodology for three developed (Germany, Portugal, UK) and two emerging economies (Brazil, Indonesia). We find that wage effects are larger in developing countries, and that for each country the largest effect on wages comes from workers who move from domestic to foreign firms. Employment growth after foreign takeover is concentrated in high-skill jobs. In contrast to widespread fears, there is no evidence that wage gains come at the expense of greater job insecur…
Does the internet increase the job finding rate? Evidence from a period of expansion in internet use
2021
Abstract We examine the impact of household access to the internet on job finding rates in Germany during a period (2006–2009) in which the share of households with a broadband connection increased by 31 percentage points, and job-seekers increased their use of the internet as a search tool. During this period, household access to broadband internet was almost completely dependent on the availability of a particular technology (DSL). We therefore exploit the variation in DSL availability across municipalities as an instrument for household access to the internet. OLS estimates which control for differences in individual and local area characteristics suggest a job finding advantage of about…
Differences in Labor Supply to Monopsonistic Firms and the Gender Pay Gap: An Empirical Analysis Using Linked Employer‐Employee Data from Germany
2010
This article investigates women’s and men’s labor supply to the firm within a semistructural approach based on a dynamic model of new monopsony. Using methods of survival analysis and a large linked employer‐employee data set for Germany, we find that labor supply elasticities are small (1.9–3.7) and that women’s labor supply to the firm is less elastic than men’s (which is the reverse of gender differences in labor supply usually found at the level of the market). Our results imply that at least one‐third of the gender pay gap might be wage discrimination by profit‐maximizing monopsonistic employers.
Has the Push for Equal Gender Representation Changed the Role of Women on German Supervisory Boards?
2017
In Germany, an intensive public debate about increasing female participation in leadership positions started in 2009 and proceeded until the beginning of 2015, when the German parliament enacted a board gender quota. In that period, the share of women on supervisory boards for 111 German publicly listed and fully codetermined companies (i.e. those which are affected by the quota law) more than doubled from 10.6 percent in 2009 to 22.6 percent in 2015. In 2016, the first year when the law was effective, the female share increased again by 4.5 percentage points. Using a hand-collected dataset, we investigate whether the rise in female board representation was accompanied by a change in gender…
More hours, more jobs? The employment effects of longer working hours
2014
Increases in standard hours of work have been a contentious policy issue in Germany. Whilst this might directly lead to a substitution of workers by hours, there may also be a positive employment effect due to reduced costs. Moreover, the response of firms may differ between firms that offer overtime and those that do not. For a panel of German plants (2001–2006) drawn from the IAB Establishment Panel, we are the first to analyse the effect of increased standard hours on employment. Using difference-in-difference methods we find that, consistent with theory, overtime plants showed a significant positive employment response, whilst for standard-time plants there is no difference between plan…
Wage Cyclicality under Different Regimes of Industrial Relations
2010
Since there is scant evidence on the role of industrial relations in wage cyclicality, this paper analyzes the effect of collective wage contracts and of works councils on real wage growth. Using linked employer-employee data for western Germany, we find that works councils affect wage growth only in combination with collective bargaining. Wage adjustments to positive and negative economic shocks are not always symmetric. Only under sectoral bargaining there is a (nearly symmetric) reaction to rising and falling unemployment. In contrast, wage growth in establishments without collective bargaining adjusts only to falling unemployment and is unaffected by rising unemployment.