This paper interprets accidents occurring on the way to and from work as negative health shocks to identify the causal effect of health on labor market outcomes. We argue that in our sample of exactly matched treated and control workers, these health shocks are quasi-randomly assigned. A...

Empirical evidence suggests that relative age, which is determined by date of birth and the school entry cutoff date, has a causal effect on track choice. Using a sample of male labor market entrants drawn from Austrian register data, I analyze whether the initial assignment to different school...

This paper explores individual motives for volunteering. The analysis is based on the interpretation of volunteering as a consumption good (consumption model) or as a mean to increase individual's own human capital (investment model). We present an econometric framework taking into account self...

Little is known about the payoffs to apprenticeship training in the German speaking countries for the participants. OLS estimates suggest that the returns are similar to those of other types of schooling. However, there is a lot of heterogeneity in the types of apprenticeships offered, and...

We examine the gender wage gap in Austria using new matched employer-employee data from 2007. We investigate the gap at the conditional wage distribution of men and women, and decompose it into the parts which are attributed to different characteristics and different returns to these...

Policies to reduce the gender pay gap feature prominently on the political agenda and interventions in the labor market are frequently proposed, claiming a persistent wage gap. We examine the change of the gender wage gap in Austria between 2002 and 2007 with new data from administrative records...

Using detailed micro data on earnings and employment, I analyze the effects of immigration on the wage distribution of native male workers in Austria. I find that immigration has heterogeneous effects on wages, differing by type of work as well as the wage level. While there are small, but...

In this paper we investigate earnings mobility in Austria from the angle of individual persons: earnings mobility over time has two aspects: positional changes and the volatility of earnings over time. Whereas the further is a positive outcome, more volatility as such can be seen as negative. We...

Individual time preference determines schooling enrolment. Moreover, smoking behavior in early ages has been shown to be highly related to time preference rates. Accordingly, we use smoking at age 16 as an instrument for schooling in order to cope with ability bias in a returns to education...

In general, retirement is seen as a pure labor supply phenomenon, but firms can have strong incentives to send expensive older workers into retirement. Based on the seniority wage model developed by Lazear (1979), we discuss steep seniority wage profiles as incentives for firms to dismiss older...