Based on local policy variation, this paper estimates the causal effect of additional career assistance on educational outcomes for students in Lower Track Secondary Schools in Germany. We find mostly insignificant effects of the treatment on average outcomes, which mask quite heterogeneous...

Self-productivity is a crucial feature in the process of skill formation. It means that skills and health acquired at one stage in the life cycle enhance skills and health formation at later stages. This paper presents an empirical investigation of self-productivity in early childhood in...

In this study, we examine the incidence and direct consequences of job mismatch for German graduates. Beyond measuring job mismatch by the comparison of qualification obtained by employees and required for a job, we employ self-reported skill mismatch variables concerning overall skills and more...

This paper investigates the evolution of wages and the recent tendency to rising wage inequality in Germany, based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for 1984 to 2004. Between 1984 and 1994 the wage distribution was fairly stable. Wage inequality started to increase around 1994 in...

We examine how the numeracy level of employees influences the quality of their on-the-job decisions. Based on an administrative dataset of a retail bank we relate the performance of loan officers in a standardized math test to the accuracy of their credit assessments of small business borrowers....

This study analyses the persistence and true state dependence of overqualification, i.e. a mismatch between workers' qualifications and their jobs' educational requirements. Employing individual-level panel data for Germany, I find that overqualification is highly persistent among tertiary...

We investigate the extent to which complementarities between technical and business skills of founders and employees matter for the generation of market novelties by new ventures. Using data about German start-ups, we find that there are no complementarities between technical and business skills...

This paper investigates the effect of the size of the local labor market on skill mismatch. Using survey data for Germany, I find that workers in large cities are both less likely to be overqualified for their job and to work in a different field than the one they are trained for. Different...

This paper investigates the changes in the German wage structure for full-time working males from 1999 to 2006. Our analysis builds on the task-based approach introduced by Autor et al. (2003), as implemented by Spitz-Oener (2006) for Germany, and also accounts for job complexity. We perform a...