CESifo Working Paper No. 10288
We develop novel measures of early-career skills that are more detailed, comprehensive, and labor-market-relevant than existing skill proxies. We exploit that skill requirements of apprenticeships in Germany are codified in state-approved, nationally standardized apprenticeship plans. These plans provide more than 13,000 different skills and the exact duration of learning each skill. Following workers over their careers in administrative data, we find that cognitive, social, and digital skills acquired during apprenticeship are highly – yet differently – rewarded.
CESifo Working Paper No. 10281
We study how technology adoption and changes in global value chain (GVC) integration jointly affect labor shares and business function specialization in a sample of 14 manufacturing industries in 14 European countries in 1999–2011. Our main contribution is to highlight the indirect effect of robotization on relative demand for labor via GVC integration. To do this, we develop a methodology to separately account for robots in the total capital stock.
CESifo Working Paper No. 10237
This paper examines the labor market adjustments to four automation technologies (i.e. robots, communication technology, information technology, and software/database) in 227 regions across 22 European countries from 1995 to 2017. By constructing a measure of technology penetration, we estimate changes in regional employment and wages affected by automation technologies along with the reallocation of workers between sectors.
CESifo Working Paper No. 10026
Immigration is one of the most divisive political issues in many countries today. Competing narratives, circulated via the media, are crucial in shaping how immigrants’ role in society is perceived. We propose a new method combining advanced natural language processing tools with dictionaries to identify sentences containing one or more of seven immigrant narrative themes and assign a sentiment to each of these. Our narrative dataset covers 107,428 newspaper articles from 70 German newspapers over the 2000 to 2019 period.
EconPol Forum 23 (5), 43-47
In B. Wawrzyniak & M. Herter (ed.), Neue Dimensionen in Data Science (Chapter 20, p. 227-242). Wichmann Fachmedien Berlin - Offenbach.
Regional Studies, Forthcoming special issue: The dark side of innovation and its geography.
As regions evolve, their economies become more complex, and they tend to diversify into related activities. Although there is a bright side to this diversification process in terms of economic development, there may also be a dark side to it, as it possibly contributes to regional inequalities. The paper uses data on industries and patents to analyse the diversification patterns of 283 regions in 32 European countries over the past 15 years. We find that only the most economically advanced regions have the opportunity to diversify into highly complex activities.
CESifo Working Paper No.9758
In this paper, we present theory and global evidence on how mobile internet access affects desire and plans to emigrate. Our theory predicts that mobile internet access increases desire and plans to emigrate. Our empirical analysis combines survey data on 617,402 individuals from 2,120 subnational districts in 112 countries with data on worldwide 3G mobile internet rollout from 2008 to 2018. We show that an increase in mobile internet access increases the desire and plans to emigrate. Instrumenting 3G rollout with pre-existing 2G infrastructure suggests that the effects are causal.
CESifo Working Paper No. 9703
When workers are displaced from their jobs in mass layoffs or firm closures, they experience lasting adverse labor market consequences. We study how these consequences vary with the amount of skill mismatch that workers experience when returning to the labor market. Using novel measures of skill redundancy and skill shortage, we analyze individuals' work histories in Germany between 1975 and 2010. We estimate difference-in-differences models, using a sample in which we match displaced workers to statistically similar non-displaced workers.
Project deliverable 1.1
This paper addresses one of the core objectives of WP1 within PILLARS, that is taking stock of the extant literature and evidence on the effects of technological change on labour outcomes and represents Deliverable 1.1 (D1.1). D1.1 systematically reviews the literatures that study at least one of the intersections between the three main factors (technology, trade and regional industrial transformations) that affect labour markets, in terms of employment and wage distribution.
Project deliverable 1.4
In this project we examine the relationship between the rise and decline of industries and the wage distribution at the regional scale. We did a study on NUTS-2 regions in Europe, for which we combined information from different data sources. Our preliminary results show that entry of industries is only associated with higher wages in regions if they are related to the existing industrial structure of the region. Exiting industries are associated with lower wages in regions in general, but exiting industries related to existing industries are linked to higher wages in regions.
CESifo Working Paper No.9444
This paper analyses the evidence of job polarization in developing and emerging economies. We carry out an extensive literature review, revealing that job polarization in these countries is only incipient compared to other advanced economies. We then examine the possible moderating aspects explaining this job polarization paradox.
CESifo Working Paper No. 9438
This paper provides empirical evidence on the complex role played by technology in affecting the relationship between the participation of EU countries and industries in Global Value Chains (GVCs) and their employment structure over the period 2000-2014. The empirical analysis is based on country/industry level data for 21 EU countries on employment, trade in value added, patents and investments in intangible assets, and focusses on backward linkages within GVCs.
Research Policy Volume 50, Issue 7, September 2021
In order to better understand the complex and dialectical relationships between digital technologies, innovation, and skills, it is necessary to improve our understanding of the coevolution between the trajectories of connected digital technologies, firm innovation routines, and skills formation. This is critical as organizations recombine and adapt digital technologies; they require new skills to innovate, learn, and adapt to evolving digital technologies, while digital technologies change the codification of knowledge for productive and innovative activities.