The German educational system finds itself being criticized by the OECD in its Programme for International Student Assessment. Family background would heavily influence children's academic achievements. A child stemming from a high class family has a 3.1 times higher chance to go to secondary...

We estimate the effect of age at preschool entrance on crucial noncognitive skills in theyear before school starts. Using an instrumental variable approach and exploiting cut-offdates for the time at preschool entrance we find that children entering preschool earlierin life have better...

We study the effect of preschool attendance on secondary school track choice in Germany which is a crucial outcome that largely predicts educational pathways of children. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, multivariate models show a significant positive association between years of...

We analyze the extent to which endogenous cultural amenities affect the spatial equilibriumshare of high-human-capital employees. To overcome endogeneity, we draw on a quasinaturalexperiment in German history and exploit the exogenous spatial distribution ofbaroque opera houses built as a part...

This paper analyzes long-term effects of skilled-worker immigration on productivityfor the Huguenots migration to Prussia. We combine Huguenot immigration lists from1700 with Prussian firm-level data on the value of inputs and outputs in 1802 in aunique data base. In 1685, religious persecution...

It is a widely held opinion that apprenticeship training represents a net investment for training firms, and that therefore firms only train if they have the possibility to recoup these investments after the training period. A recent study using a new firm-level dataset for Switzerland showed,...

The artistic labor market is marked by several adversities, such as low wages, above-average unemployment, and constrained underemployment. Nevertheless, it attracts many young people. The number of students exceeds the available jobs by far. A potential explanation for this puzzle is that...

This paper addresses the question of organization of work and efficient reorganization. An emerging literature is basically concerned with the polar model of high involvement (holistic) vs. traditional (Tayloristic) work organizations. This paper extends in two ways: First, the polar case is...

The objective of the paper is to confront the conclusions in the seminal papers of Lindbeck and Snower (2001, 2000, 1996) and Snower (1998) with the empirical evidence in the manufacturing sector, thus testing the from-Tayloristic-to-holistic-organization model. Starting from stylized facts as...

Das Polarmodell zur holistischen Reorganisation nimmt seinen Ausgang bei den stilisierten Fakten der vergangenen zwei Dekaden, die durch massive Umbauprozesse, gerade auch bei der Arbeitsorganisation, gekennzeichnet sind. Der vorliegende Beitrag schließt den Kreis, indem er das Polarmodell...