Holger Bonin

Cross-Sectional Earnings Risk and Occupational Sorting: The Role of Risk Attitudes

This paper investigates whether risk preferences explain how individuals are sorted into occupations with different earnings variability. We exploit data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which contains a subjective assessment of willingness to take risks whose behavioral relevance has been validated in previous work. As a measure of earnings risk, we use the cross-sectional variation in earnings that is left unexplained by human capital in Mincerian wage regressions. By relating earnings risk to the measure of individual risk preference, our evidence shows that individuals with low willingness to take risks are more likely to be sorted into occupations with low earnings risk. This pattern is found regardless of the level of occupation categories, region, gender and labor market experience. We also find that risk preferences are significant determinant of wages in a Mincer regression, illustrating the importance of preferences and attitudes in addition to more standard regressors.

Can Immigration Alleviate the Demographic Burden

This paper investigates the impact of immigration on intertemporal public budgets. A modified generational accounting framework is employed to compute the average net contribution of migrants to the public sector budget in Germany. Our findings suggest that the overall fiscal contribution of immigrants is positive if they resemble current migrant residents in their economic characteristics. Therefore, immigration can decrease the fiscal burden of future resident generations. We also show that active migration policy favoring high-skilled immigrants to facilitate their labor market assimilation, may considerably enlarge the positive impact of immigration on the tax burden of native residents. However, even high immigrant inflows only partially remove the intergenerational fiscal imbalance induced by aging in Germany.

Dismissal Protection and Worker Flows in Small Establishments

Based on a large employer-employee matched data set, the paper investigates the effects of variable enforcement of German dismissal protection legislation on the employment dynamics in small establishments. Specifically, using a difference-in-differences approach, we study the effect of changes in the threshold scale exempting small establishments from dismissal protection provisions on worker flows. In contrast to the predictions of the theory, our results indicate that there are no statistically significant effects of the dismissal protection legislation on worker turnover.

Real and Nominal Wage Rigidities and the Rate of Inflation: Evidence from West German Micro Data

The Paper examines real and nominal wage rigidities. We estimate a switching regime model, in which the observed distribution of individual wage changes, computed from West German register data for 1976-97, is generated by simultaneous processes of real, nominal or no wage rigidity, and measurement error. The fraction of workers facing wage increases that are due to nominal, but mostly real, wage rigidity is substantial. The extent of real rigidity rises with inflation, whereas the opposite holds for nominal rigidity. Overall, the incidence of wage rigidity, which accelerates unemployment growth, is most likely minimized in an environment with moderate inflation.

Native-Migrant Differences in Risk Attitudes

This article questions the perceived wisdom that migrants are more risk-loving than the native population. We employ a new large German survey of direct individual risk measures to find that first-generation migrants have lower risk attitudes than natives, which only equalize in the second generation.

Beyond the Toledo agreement: the intergenerational impact of the Spanish Pension Reform

The paper examines the intergenerational impact of the Spanish public pension system after the 1997 Pension Reform Act. Within a Generational Accounting framework, we find that the new legal setting could leave future generations with liabilities as high as 176% of 1996 GDP. Hence, we analyse the impact of alternative reforms. Holding the pay-as-you-go setting, a further improvement to tax-benefit linkage in line with the Toledo Agreement proposals is shown to yield an intergenerationally more balanced outcome, than an increase in the retirement age or an expansion of public subsidies financed through indirect taxes. Finally, a move toward a partially funded pension system which restores the intergenerational balance is simulated.

The Post-Unification German Labor Market

This study surveys the development of the East German labor market after the unification of Germany. We explain that in the last decade, East Germans were faced with very high levels of joblessness that considering labor market exits and active labor market policy, are only partly reported as unemployment. A review of the evidence on the effectiveness of labor market policies suggests that job creation and training programs did not substantially promote reemployment, though they may have alleviated social burdens from unemployment. Discussing what causes the high unemployment in the east, we claim that effects of wage policy have been overrated. Differences in unemployment rates are also the result of more ample labor supply. We show that employment levels in the east have almost converged on western standards. The structure of employment, however, differs. Shortage of part-time work, service jobs and independent employment indicates that East Germany has failed to develop a service economy. We argue that unqualified adaptation to western procedures aggravated the investment and employment problem in the east.

Will it Last? An Assessment of the 2001 German Pension Reform

In May 2001, Germany adopted a fundamental pension reform cutting back public pensions and introducing personal pension accounts. The paper critically reviews the reform decisions and evaluates their long-term viability. It is shown that the adjustment of the Public Pension Scheme misses the proclaimed contribution rate and replacement ratio targets already under moderate economic conditions. However, the new private pension plans provide scope for further downsizing state pensions, necessary beyond 2025. As the enacted savings rate target is conservative, individual pensions keep retirement income sufficient even if returns to pension funds are low due to legal restrictions on savings vehicles.

Ethnic Persistence, Assimilation and Risk Proclivity

AbstractThis paper investigates whether immigrants adapt to the attitudes of the majority population in the host country by focusing on the effect of ethnic persistence and assimilation on individual risk proclivity. Employing information from a unique representative German survey, we find that adaptation to the host country closes the existing immigrant-native gap in risk proclivity by reducing immigrants’ risk aversion and explains the systematic variation in the observed risk attitudes across immigrants of different origins. Our analysis of the adaptation behavior of immigrants suggests that acquisition of social norms is an essential factor in the formation of individual attitudes.JEL classificationD1, D81, F22, J15, J16, J31, J62, J82

‘Beautiful Serbia’ - objective and subjective outcomes of active labour market policy in a transition economy†

This paper studies the causal impact of participation in the Beautiful Serbia programme providing training and temporary work in the construction sector in Serbia on labour market outcomes as well as on measures of subjective well‐being approximating individual welfare. According to our estimates, the positive impact of this particular programme appears much stronger when judged by subjective well‐being than when judged by the immediate labour market effect.