Peter Jacobebbinghaus

Occupational upgrading and the business cycle in West Germany

The occupational skill structure depends on the business cycle if employers respond to shortages of applicants during upturns by lowering their hiring standards. The notion and relevance of hiring standards adjustment was advanced by Reder and investigated formally in a search-theoretic framework by Mortensen. Devereux implements empirical tests for these theories and finds affirmative evidence for the U.S. labour market. We replicate his analysis using German employment register data. Regarding the occupational skill composition we obtain somewhat lower but qualitatively similar responses to the business cycle despite of well known institutional differences between the U.S. and German labour market. The responsiveness of occupational composition wages to the business cycle is considerably lower in Germany.

Reforming Social Welfare as We Know It? A Microsimulation Study for Germany

Social assistance and unemployment assistance, which provide means tested income support (social welfare) without pre-specified time limits, are viewed as one important reason for the persistently high level of unemployment in Germany by many economists. In order to increase work incentives and, at the same time, reduce social expenditures there have been various proposals to reform social welfare in the recent German policy debate. We analyse a specific reform proposal with the following components: (i) an integration of unemployment assistance and social assistance; (ii) a substantial reduction of the social assistance level for ?employable? persons who choose not to work; (iii) improved incentives to take up work by a combination of a reduction of the social assistance withdrawal rate and an earnings-related tax credit. The expected employment and fiscal effects of this welfare reform proposal are simulated on the basis of an econometrically estimated partialequilibrium labour supply/demand model embedded in a detailed tax-benefit microsimulation model. We find that the reductions in net social expenditures may be substantial, although the expected labour supply and employment effects of this reform are much smaller than is typically assumed by contributors to recent discussions on the potential labour market effects of welfare reforms in Germany. Furthermore, these employment gains come at the cost of a substantial expansion of public-works jobs.

New technologies and the demand for medium qualified labour in Germany

The literature on skill-biased technological change concentrates on highly skilled and unskilled employees. It is unclear, however, if the employment opportunities of the majority of the labour force in Germany - employees with a degree from the dual apprenticeship system - increase or not. In addition, estimation and data problems are addressed in a topical and rich data set. The paper shows that innovation expenditures and investments in information and communication technologies lead to lower medium skilled employee shares, whereas other investments lead to higher shares.

Wie kann die durchschnittliche Ausbildungsquote in Deutschland korrekt gemessen werden

ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag zeigt, dass die Ausbildungsquote ein relativ starkes saisonales Muster aufweist. Dies bedeutet, dass Statistiken über die Ausbildungsquote, wie sie beispielsweise in offiziellen Publikationen verwandt werden, substanziell von der tatsächlichen durchschnittlichen Ausbildungsquote abweichen können, wenn sie an einem Termin in der Nähe des Minimums (Ende Juli) oder des Maximums (um den Jahreswechsel) gemessen werden. Hinzu kommt, dass die Abweichung vom jährlichen Mittelwert zwischen Berufsgruppen schwankt, da die Berufe unterschiedliche Ausbildungsdauern aufweisen. Dieser Beitrag schlägt vor, die jährlichen Durchschnittswerte der Ausbildungsquote auf der Basis täglicher Quoten anstatt an festgesetzten Terminen zu bestimmen. Es wird zudem dafür plädiert, die tagesgenauen Daten des deutschen Sozialversicherungssystems zur Schätzung der durchschnittlichen Ausbildungsquote zu verwenden. AbstractThis paper demonstrates that the share of apprentices exhibits a relatively strong seasonal pattern. This means that statistics on the share of apprentices such as those presented in official publications differ substantially from the actual yearly mean if they are measured on a date close to the minimum (end of July) or the maximum (around the turn of the year). In addition, the deviation from the yearly mean differs between occupations at certain measurement dates because occupations have different apprenticeship durations. This paper proposes to estimate the yearly average of apprenticeship shares on the basis of daily shares instead of certain measurement dates. It also argues to use daily accurate employment data from the German social security system.

Linked-Employer-Employee (LEE) Daten in der Organisationsforschung

Verknupfte Personen-Betriebsdaten bzw. Linked-Employer-Employee-Daten sind eine zunehmend genutzte Grundlage zur Beantwortung einer Reihe von Fragestellungen innerhalb und auserhalb der Organisationsforschung. Der Beitrag beschreibt die Analysepotenziale derartiger Datensatze und stellt die unterschiedlichen Vorgehensweisen zu ihrer Generierung dar. Welche methodischen Herausforderungen sich daraus ergeben, wird am Beispiel von zwei Studien erortert, die jeweils eine unterschiedliche Vorgehensweise bei der Datenerhebung wahlten. In der einen Studie wurde das „Employer-first“ Verfahren angewandt. Dabei wird zunachst eine Stichprobe von Betrieben bzw. Organisationen gezogen, um dann im Anschluss Beschaftigte innerhalb dieser Betriebe zu befragen. Die zweite Studie wahlte hingegen den umgekehrten Weg des „Employee-first“ Verfahrens: hier wird mit einer Stichprobe von Beschaftigten gestartet, um daran anschliesend deren aktuelle Arbeitgeber (Betrieb) zu befragen. Die methodische Anlage beider Studien und die sich daraus ergebenden Vor- und Nachteile werden detailliert beschrieben und die Nutzlichkeit unterschiedlicher LEE-Datenstrukturen fur die Organisationsforschung diskutiert. Zusatzlich wird auf Moglichkeiten verwiesen, wie das Analysepotenzial solcher Datensatze weiter ausgebaut werden kann.

The Organizational Production of Earnings Inequalities in Germany, 1994-2010

What drives workplace inequality levels and trends? We investigate this question with 1994- 2010 German private sector linked employer-employee panel data. We find that between workplace inequalities have risen faster than reported in previous work. Similar to studies in Sweden and the U.S. we find that most earnings inequalities are within workplaces, but much of the growth in earnings inequalities is between workplaces. Fixed effect models suggest that mean workplace wages – the between workplace component of growing national inequality – are primarily driven by changes in the skill composition of the workplace, although the rise of part-time employment has increased the aggregate wages of full-time workers and increased female employment depresses mean workplace wages. Within workplace inequality estimates highlight the central role of categorical distinctions – e.g. gender, education, part-time composition, and skill variance – in driving within workplace inequalities. Within workplace inequality is rising steeply in low wage workplaces. Gender heterogeneity and gender segregation are both associated with higher within workplace inequality, although these mechanisms seem to be weakening over time. Both high skill and part-time intensive workplaces generate high within workplace inequality, suggesting that high inequality is consistent with both low and high road production strategies.

Generating useful test data for complex linked employer-employee datasets

When data access for external researchers is difficult or time consuming it can be beneficial if test datasets that mimic the structure of the original data are disseminated in advance. With these test data researchers can develop their analysis code or can decide whether the data are suitable for their planned research before they go through the lengthly process of getting access at the research data center. The aim of these data is not to provide any meaningful results. Instead it is important to maintain the structure of the data as closely as possible including skip patterns, logical constraints between the variables, and longitudinal relationships so that any code that is developed using these test data will also run on the original data without further modifications. Achieving this goal can be challenging for complex datasets such as linked employer-employee datasets (LEED) where the links between the establishments and the employees also need to be maintained. Using the LEED of the Institute for Employment Research we illustrate how useful test data can be developed for such complex datasets. Our approach mainly relies on traditional statistical disclosure control (SDC) techniques such as data swapping and noise addition for data protection. Since statistical inferences need not be preserved, high swapping rates can be applied to sufficiently protect the data. At the same time it is straightforward to maintain the structure of the data by adding some constraints on the swapping procedure.