Comparing survey data with an official administrative population: assessing sample-selectivity in the IAB Establishment Panel

The IAB Establishment Panel is a large annual establishment survey and serves as a data source for many empirical analyzes, e.g., on labor demand, wages and industrial relations but also for influential policy evaluations. We analyze the selectivity of the IAB Establishment Panel compared with the administrative population of all establishments in Germany to test whether the IAB Establishment Panel is biased towards “good employers”. By design the survey over-samples large, thus high paying and stable establishments. After flexibly controlling for elements of the sampling design, we do not detect any meaningful difference between establishments participating in the survey and the full population regarding key economic performance indicators. If anything, we observe a slight overrepresentation of stable and slow growing establishments. For applied research, the results highlight that “typical” econometric specifications may not be sufficient to control for selectivity.

     

The German generation internship and the minimum wage introduction: evidence from big data

The new German minimum wage applies a specific exemption clause for internships, where internships that last up to three months are exempted while internships that exceed three months are due to the minimum wage. Negative minimum wage effects on internships are heavily debated as internships are mostly non-productive. Difference-in-difference analyses that exploit establishment and regional variation in the bite of the minimum wage do not show a reduction in the number of internships. In addition, we pursue an innovative approach by using Google search data to analyse how the search intensity for internships changed in course of the minimum wage introduction. Difference-in-difference comparisons with other countries in Europe do not reveal an effect on the search for internship positions in general, but we observe a significant reduction in Google search for ‘generation internship’. This suggests that the underlying societal phenomenon of a generation entering internships without a perspective for regular jobs has lost in relevance.     

Chasing the carrot – actual working hours of fixed-term employees

Fixed-term contracts can serve as a screening device to reveal the true ability of workers. To achieve promotion to a permanent position, fixed-term employees have an incentive to prove themselves by providing higher effort than competing co-workers by means of longer working hours. Applying fixed effects estimation to the German register data, we find that employees work longer hours on fixed-term contracts. This effect is stronger for labour market entrants and employees that are newly hired. We further show that actual hours of work are particularly large when there is competition among co-workers to receive promotion to a permanent position.     

The Rise in Orientation at Collective Bargaining Without a Formal Contract

While firm participation in collective bargaining between unions and employers’ associations has been decreasing in Germany over the last two decades, orientation at collectively bargained wages has increased in popularity. Orientation implies that employers claim to set wages according to collective agreements but they are not formally bound by the respective bargaining contract, and in fact, I observe that they pay significantly lower wages than firms that are formally covered. Dynamic nonlinear panel estimation applied to establishment‐level data shows that this orientation is a stepping stone into formal participation. However, the decline in formal participation and the opposing rise in orientation are mostly due to a changing establishment composition rather than to behavioral transitions.     

Employment expectations and uncertainties ahead of the new German minimum wage

This article analyzes announcement effects of the new statutory minimum wage on employment expectations and uncertainties in Germany. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach applied to the IAB Establishment Panel, employers affected by the minimum wage show an increased employment uncertainty and a 0.9% points drop in their expected employment growth. Using the same identification strategy with data from 2015, the treatment effect on actual employment growth of affected employers matches the employers' expectation. Hence, an analysis of employer expectations seems to be promising to detect employment effects of policy changes before they come into force.     

Mindestlohn in Deutschland,Großbritannien und in den USA

In Germany, there is an ongoing debate on whether the new statutory minimum wage has had negative employment effects. First evaluation results point at a fairly modest job loss. However, long-run effects are difficult to estimate. While the German minimum wage might be adjusted by an economically sound growth rate, minimum wages in Great Britain and some US states have been increased beyond the level that existing evidence would suggest is necessary.