Research Seminar & RTG Day
Winter 2024/25
The research seminar, which regularly hosts external researchers, is open to the public. It is part of the RTG Day and will be held in LF 224 on the Duisburg Campus of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) every Tuesday from 16:15 to 17:30 during the winter semester of 2024/25.
The easiest way to reach Duisburg Campus is by Bus #933 or #926 from Duisburg Central Train Station. Please take the East Exit (Osteingang) as you leave the Central Station. You will see the bus stop for #933 and #926 when you walk about 50 meters and hit the Neudorfer Straße. You need to get off the bus at the stop “Duisburg Universität”.
15 October 2024
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
Richard Murphy (University of Texas at Austin)
Losing Their Religion: State Banning of Religion, Social Norms, and Female Participation
(with Shqiponja Telhaj)
This paper studies the relationship between economic prosperity and religion through the lens of social norms. In a social equilibrium framework, where a society is one realization of many possible equilibria, we model how the Albanian government increased female participation in education and employment by changing the social equilibrium through credibly committing to communist ideals. This shift was accomplished by declaring Albania the First Atheist country in the world in 1967 and the de-sanctification of its religious buildings, excluding those deemed national cultural monuments 20 years prior. Exploiting this unique natural experiment, we use this variation in spared buildings to measure the credibility of the government’s commitment to female emancipation in each municipality. In doing so, our main focus is on citizens’ faith in the state’s commitment, rather than their faith in religion. Using forty years of hand-transcribed administrative data, we show that in the decades following the reform, municipalities in which all religious buildings were de-sanctified experienced higher growth in female schooling, labor market participation, and production. Supplementary analysis, exploiting the Demographic and Health Survey data on social norms, shows that the reform has had lasting improvement of female empowerment. We argue that the Albanian government changed social norms through the banning of religion to achieve their policy goals.
22 October 2024
Miriam Beblo (University of Hamburg)
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
A meta approach to analysing competition behavior
The labour market is marked by gender gaps in participation, earnings, and representation. Experimental studies have been investigating competition preferences as a possible source for these gaps for almost 20 years now, providing a vast collection of data (=studies) with large variation in participants, design and location. We exploit the experimental evidence on competition entry by gender in a meta approach. First, we investigate the effect size of a gender gap in competition entry, its moderators across studies and how it varies across countries at different stages of gender equality achievement. Secondly, we present the concept of a meta analysis based on the primary data level instead of the study level, since questions on efficient competition (whether those with the largest chances of winning enter the tournament) and endogenous performance (whether competition itself has an effect on performance) can only be answered with individual data.
5 November 2024
Gabriel Loumeau (VU Amsterdam)
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
The Rise of Consumer Cities: Evidence from the City of Light
(with P.-P. Combes, L. Gobillon, G. Loumeau and Y. Zylberberg)
This paper studies the emergence of a city as a center of consumption. We leverage the arrival of gas-powered lighting in Paris in 1830 to investigate the location choices and spatial complementarity of a wide range of consumption activities. We track individual places of consumption throughout the 19th century using geo-localized trade directories data extracted with advanced image recognition techniques. Our analysis underscores the pivotal role of the initial gas lines in the “City of Light” as a gravitational hub for consumer-oriented establishments such as apparel boutiques, cafes, restaurants, and merchandise vendors. These birth of bright consumption centers also triggers an urban segregation trend that barely existed before. Finally, we present additional evidence that the improved street lighting notably impacted consumption activities by and for women.
12 November 2024
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
Ana Moreno (University of Mannheim)
Delayed Childbearing and Urban Revival: A Structural Approach
(with Clara Santamaria)
Since 1980, college graduates have increasingly sorted into the downtowns of U.S. cities. This led to urban revival, a process that involves fast growth in income and housing prices downtown. Motivated by the observation that young childless households concentrate downtown, we link urban revival to delayed childbearing. As college graduates postpone parenthood, more of them are childless when young and locate downtown. Estimating a dynamic model of fertility timing and within-city location choices, we find delayed childbearing accounts for 52% of urban revival. The impact of changes in fertility choices is amplified by the response of housing prices and amenities.
19 November 2024
Vera Troeger (University of Hamburg)
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
Better Representation, More Influence? Explaining Female Marginalization in German State Parliaments
Women are still under-represented in positions of power and have limited access to the most prestigious policy areas. As a consequence, women do not have the same opportunities as men to influence policy-making. We have theoretical reasons to believe that the politics of committee assignments give room for female discrimination. We assess differences in committee membership using unique fine-grained data on members of German state parliaments from 1948 to 2016 and provide several measures of committee importance. With matching and decomposition methods we test whether observable qualifications and experience, electoral incentives and structural aspects help explain gendered committee assignments. If anything, we find that female marginalization strengthens with more women entering state parliaments. Observable characteristics and structural aspects explain these patterns only partially. We conclude that women remain systematically disadvantaged in the most relevant policy domains.
10 December 2024
Bettina Siflinger (Tilburg University)
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
The Impact of Childcare Policies on Mental Health and Education: Evidence from Subsidy Changes in the Netherlands
17 December 2024
No Seminar
14 January 2025
Sebastian Siegloch (University of Cologne)
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
Welfare Effects of Property Taxation
(with Max Löffler)
We investigate the welfare implications of property taxation. We apply a sufficient statistics approach that accounts for the distributional effects of tax changes at the household level within a spatial equilibrium framework. We show that equity effects are driven by price adjustments in the housing and labor markets, while efficiency is determined by changes in public goods. Using microdata and exploiting 5,500 municipal property tax changes in Germany, where assessed housing values remain constant, we find that 83 percent of the tax burden is passed through to rental prices, with modest labor market effects. Simulations of the welfare effects of property taxes reveal that the price effects of property tax hikes are regressive. Despite low efficiency costs of the tax, it becomes distributionally neutral only if public good preferences are very high.
21 January 2025
Gilles Duranton (Wharton School of the Univ. of Pennsylvania)
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
Urbanization and urban divergence: France 1760 – 2020
(with Pierre-Philippe Combes, Laurent Gobillon, Clément Gorin, and Frédéric Robert-Nicoud)
We use a combination of image processing and machine learning tools to extract data from historical maps of France. Granular information about the distribution of population allows us to delineate cities consistently (and relatively) over 260 years. Against a backdrop of rising population, the rate of urbanization increased, but the number of cities declined, and the size distribution of cities also became increasingly skewed. Within cities, population density rose, and its gradient flattened. To bring these facts together, we propose a model of urban divergence for which we verify further empirical predictions.
28 January 2025
Therese Nilsson (Lund University)
LF 224, Duisburg Campus
Individualism and Working from Home
(with Jan Bietenbeck and Natalie Imert)
In this paper we investigate the role of individualism in explaining cross-country differences in working from home (WFH). Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) of the United States and the European Social Survey (ESS), we isolate the influence of individualism by comparing immigrants from different cultural backgrounds residing in the same location. We find that a 10-point increase in country-of-origin individualism, measured on a 0-100 scale, is associated with a 3.9 percentage point (pp) higher likelihood of WFH and 1.12 more weekly WFH hours in the CPS, and a 2 pp higher likelihood of frequent WFH in the ESS. Our analysis of potential mechanisms suggests that individualism influences WFH through higher educational attainment and occupational selection.
Previous Seminars
Summer 2024
The research seminar invites external researchers on a regular basis and is open to the public. It is part of the RTG day and takes place in room Altendorfer A-B02, Essen on Tuesdays from 16:15 to 17:30 during the summer term 2024.
The Meeting Point for the RTG Scholars on the RTG Day is: WST-C 09.02 (entrance through the WST-C 09.03)
16 April 2024
Eric Hornung (University of Cologne)
NAFTA and drug-related violence in Mexico
(with Eduardo Hidalgo and Pablo Selaya)
We study how NAFTA changed the geography of violence in Mexico. We propose that open borders increased trafficking profits of Mexican cartels and resulted in violent competition among them. We test this hypothesis by comparing changes in drug-related homicides after NAFTA’s introduction in 1994 across municipalities with and without drug-trafficking routes. Routes are optimal paths connecting municipalities with a recent history of drug trafficking with U.S. ports of entry. On these routes, homicides increase by 27% relative to the pre-NAFTA mean. These results cannot be explained by changes in worker’s opportunity costs of using violence resulting from the trade shock.
23 April 2024
Martin Fischer (Lund University )
Labour market returns to compulsory schooling in the presence of school tracking
Returns to education from instrumental variable estimation using compulsory schooling reforms have been interpreted as local average treatment effects (LATE) with school dropouts as the complier sub-population. I show that within traditional European school systems employing academic tracking, compulsory schooling reforms do not necessarily warrant such an interpretation. The complier population instead includes a further, conceptually different group of students which face constraints imposed by the institutional setting. These students are unable to attend their desired amount of schooling within the non-academic track. Leveraging two quasi-experiments in Sweden, I can compare labour market returns for students who were given the option to attend one additional year of education in lower secondary school to students who were mandated to take an additional school year. Results for life-cycle earnings show that only those who were forced to stay gained large labour market returns following an additional year of schooling (12% vs. OLS returns to education of 6%). In contrast, students student who voluntarily stayed in school for another year gained substantially smaller labour market returns on average. Interpreting the results within a marginal treatment framework, students with a higher resistance to stay in school had the highest earnings gains from additional schooling. The results are in line with findings on the so-called incarceration effect and conceptually connect compulsory schooling reforms with changes in the school minimum leaving age, which naturally target drop-outs only.
30 April 2024
Patrick Lehnert (University of Zurich)
The Effect of Postsecondary Educational Institutions on Local Economies: A Bird’s-Eye View
(with Patrick Lehnert, Madison Dell, Uschi Backes-Gellner and Eric Bettinger)
Over the last 50 years, nations worldwide have established higher education institutions to stimulate local economic growth. However, empirical evidence on local economic outcomes is still scarce, mainly because of a lack of adequate data. This paper provides evidence on the expansion of branch campuses in Tennessee and Texas, two states that are representative of the underlying patterns in the U.S. as a whole. As we expect the economic effect to be very localized, we use a novel and highly disaggregated proxy for regional economic activity based on daytime satellite imagery. Applying three panel estimation methods—traditional difference-in-differences (DD), heterogeneityrobust DD, and instrumental variables (IV)—we find positive associations for Tennessee and Texas in all estimations. In Tennessee, the traditional DD approach yields an increase in GDP of 1.4 percent after a campus opens (according to our most conservative estimate) and is driven by two-year branch campuses. In Texas, this effect amounts to 5.9 percent, with both two- and four-year branch campuses contributing to it. In our IV estimations, we take advantage of local taxing regulations that influence the decision to open branch campuses in certain locations but not the local economic conditions. We use this exogenous variation to estimate causal effects and find an even larger positive effect of 12.5 percent for the most conservative estimate. Given the widespread use of higher education expansion to induce economic growth, particularly in rural areas, this paper contributes important evidence on the economic impact of such campus openings on regional economic activity.
7 May 2024
Christina Gathmann (University of Luxembourg)
AI and the Labor Market: Impact on Job Tasks, Firm Employment and Local Labor Markets
How will AI reshape jobs and labor markets, and how does its impact differ from prior waves of technological change like robots?. To answer this question, we develop new measures for the advancement of AI and robotics technologies in Europe using Natural Language Processing techniques on patent data. Combining the patent-based measures with survey data on tasks, we find that AI exposure shifts the content of jobs from non-routine abstract tasks towards routine tasks, the opposite of what is observed for robots. These task shifts occur mainly within narrowly defined occupations within manufacturing and services. Combining the patent-based measures with administrative data on establishments and workers in Germany, we find negative employment effects for AI whereas robots negatively affect low-skill employment but increase medium- and high-skill employment. We also investigate the employment and wage responses in local labor markets using a shift-share design. In both manufacturing and services, AI reduces employment for medium-skill workers, while robots replace mostly low-skilled workers in manufacturing.
14 May 2024
Raoul van Maarseveen (University of Cologne)
Urbanization and educational attainment: evidence from Africa
Despite the rapid urbanization of the developing world, little remains known about how urban residency and migration affect childhood outcomes. Using census data for 14 African countries combined with an age-at-move design, I show that childhood exposure to cities significantly increases primary school completion and literacy rates of children, even for poor urban households. The availability of schools and the lower opportunity costs of education appear to be the main factors explaining the higher education attainment in urban regions. The paper thus provides evidence of a novel channel through which urban migration can promote economic development in developing countries.
11 June 2024
Eric Maurin (Paris School of Economics)
Sick of Working from Home?
Driven by new information technologies, working from home has experienced unprecedented growth since the COVID pandemic. We contribute to the debate on the consequences of this development by drawing on a French reform conducted in 2017, with the aim of facilitating telework agreements between employers and employees. We show that the reform was followed by a boom in working from home, particularly in mid-level occupations. On the other hand, employees in lower-level occupations were virtually unaffected. By comparing occupational groups before and after the reform, in firms that have signed telework agreements and in firms that have not, we find that the development of working from home coincides with a significant deterioration in the health status of mid-level employees, particularly men. Wages and number hours worked, on the other hand, remain largely unaffected.
18 June 2024
Christian Traxler (Hertie School)
Swiftness and Delay of Punishment
(with Libor Dušek)
This paper studies how the swiftness and delay of punishment affect behavior. Using rich administrative data from automated speed cameras, we exploit two (quasi-)experimental sources of variation in the time between a speeding offense and the sending of a ticket. At the launch of the speed camera system, administrative challenges caused delays of up to three months. Later, we implemented a protocol that randomly assigned tickets to swift or delayed processing. We identify two different results. First, delays have a negative effect on payment compliance: the rate of timely paid fines diminishes by 7 to 9% when a ticket is sent with a delay of four or more weeks. We also find some evidence that very swift tickets – sent on the first or second day following the offense – increase timely payments. These results align with the predictions of expert scholars that we elicited in a survey. Second, speeding tickets cause a strong, immediate, and persistent decline in speeding. However, we do not detect any robust, differential effects of swiftness or delay on speeding. This challenges widely held beliefs, as reflected in our survey. Yet, we document large mechanical benefits of swift punishment and provide a theoretical framework of learning and updating that explains our findings.
25 June 2024
Kristina Strohmaier (University of Duisburg Essen)
Tax Enforcement Spillovers – Evidence from Business Tax Audits in South Africa
(with Nadine Riedel and Collen Lediga)
Taxpayer audits are key instruments to combat tax evasion. Whether they deter tax non-compliance beyond audited taxpayers is largely unclear, however. Drawing on rich tax administrative data for South Africa, we show that business tax audits enhance the tax reporting compliance of unaudited firms in the same local network as the targeted business. On average, firms’ reported tax liability increases by 1% when a business in close proximity (located within a 100m radius) undergoes an audit. This estimate translates into sizable aggregate revenue gains, as audited firms are linked to numerous neighbors. Additional analyses show that audit spillovers emerge across a larger spatial scale within industry and tax preparer networks. Our findings carry important implications for the design of tax enforcement policies.
9 July 2024
Sebastian Findeisen (University of Konstanz)
Family-Friendly Workplace Policies
(with Julián Costas-Fernández, Anna Raute, Uta Schönberg)
The literature has studied the willingness to pay for family-friendly amenities, but less is known about the supply side and the incentives for firms to provide these amenities. There are two main incentives for firms to offer family-friendly workplace policies. First, such amenities may increase employee retention or reduce the duration of labor market breaks after the arrival of children. Second, if some workers are willing to pay for these amenities, firms can offer them to attract new workers.
Our study utilizes German matched employer-employee data combined with detailed survey panel data on firm provision of childcare to examine these motives. We find that firm-provided childcare enhances retention and shortens labor market breaks for mothers, especially for high-wage mothers. It also contributes to employment growth, disproportionately driven by firms attracting female talent. These findings can be rationalized through a stylized model of imperfect competition in the labor market, where family-friendly workplace policies are modeled as an amenity with direct production benefits.