Working Paper


Job Loss and Retirement

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on the long-term effects of job loss on retirement, based on German administrative data. To identify the effect of job loss, I exploit plant closures to compare the retirement behavior of displaced workers with similar workers who did not experience job loss. I show that displaced workers delay their retirement in response to the shock. This delay is equally driven by extended periods of both employment and unemployment, and ineligibility for early pension claiming is the main driver of this response. Despite adjustments in retirement behavior, displaced workers still face significant losses in pension benefits and lifetime income. Compared to similar non-displaced workers, displaced workers experience losses in the present discounted value of income of around 26%.


Moving to Opportunity, together (with Seema Jayachandran, Matthew Notowidigdo, Marie Paul, Heather Sarsons and Elin Sundberg) [pdf]

Abstract: Many couples face a trade-off between advancing one spouse’s career or the other’s. We study this trade-off using administrative data from Germany and Sweden. We first conduct an event-study analysis of couples moving across commuting zones and find that relocation increases men’s earnings more than women’s, with strikingly similar patterns in Germany and Sweden. Using a sample of mass layoff events, we then find that couples in both countries are more likely to relocate in response to the man being laid off compared to the woman. We investigate whether these gendered patterns reflect men’s higher potential earnings or a gender norm that prioritizes men’s career advancement. We provide suggestive evidence of a gender norm using variation in norms within Germany. We then develop and estimate a model of household decision-making in which households can place more weight on the income earned by the man compared to the woman. In both countries, the estimated model can accurately reproduce the reduced-form results, including those not used to estimate the model. The results point to a role for gender norms in explaining the gender gap in the returns to joint moves.


Alive and Kicking? Short-Term Health Effects of a Physician Strike in Germany (with Daniel Avdic, Martin Karlsson and Nina Schwarz) [pdf]

Abstract: We study the effects of a physician strike in German hospitals in 2006 on patient mortality. Leveraging a comprehensive dataset encompassing all hospital admissions in Germany and employing digitised records of strike participation, we estimate a difference-in-differenes model to discern the causal effects of the strike. Our estimation results reveal a substantial decrease in hospital admissions during the strike period, whereas effects on hospital mortality are mostly driven by patient selection. To support this claim, we further show that emergency cases and more fragile patients, who were unable to substitute their immediate care needs, were more likely to be present in hospital during this period. Hence, in contrast to most other related studies, our results suggest that short term interruptions in access to healthcare may not have dramatic effects on healthcare quality provided that rationing of care by patient severity is carried out.