• Welcome

    Welcome to my personal website. I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Employment Research. My main research interests are Machine Learning techniques for causal inference and the effects of globalization on the labor market, whereby gobalization is measured by cross-border factor movements such as goods, capital, and labor.

  • Research

    The Wage Effects of Offshoring to the East and West

    Evidence from the German Labor Market

    • IAB-Discussion Paper
    • Abstract: This paper analyzes the labor market effects of offshoring in a high-wage home country and how these effects crucially depend on (1) job complexity and (2) the characteristics of the destination country. It thereby links several sources: rich administrative data on individuals and plants in the German manufacturing industries, information on a job's task bundle, and the evolution of imported inputs from low- or high-wage destinations, which are represented by Eastern and Western Europe, respectively.
      Offshoring to these origins has opposing effects on German wages with respect to the relative task complexity of jobs: While offshoring to the West puts pressure on the wages of complex jobs and increases the wages of simple jobs, offshoring to the East entails the opposite effect. The overall effect adds up to a 4.2 percent increase in wages for jobs with high complexity, while low-complexity jobs see a 3.9 percent decrease in wages.
    • Review of World Economics, 2023, 159, pp. 399-435. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-022-00471-4

     

    FDI and Onshore Employment Dynamics

    Evidence from German Firms with Affiliates in the Czech Republic

    • IAB-Discussion Paper
    • Abstract: In this paper, we revisit questions about the onshore employment effects of firms that conduct foreign direct investment (FDI) in countries with substantially lower average wages. Our results derive from the use of rich administrative records on the universe of employees in German multinational enterprises (MNEs) that were active in the Czech Republic in 2010. Compared with former studies, the unique dataset in this study includes a much higher fraction of small and medium-sized firms and leads to strikingly different results for service MNEs. Applying coarsened exact matching for firms and an event-study design, we show that the domestic employment growth of MNEs decreases relative to that of non-MNEs and that the affected workers are those with low or medium educational attainment in the manufacturing sector and with medium or high educational attainment in the service sector. Regarding workers' tasks, our results do not show that FDI affects routine jobs beyond a worker's skill level.
    • The World Economy, 2022, 45(6), pp. 1773-1829. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.13223

     

    FDI and Onshore Job Stability

    Upgrades, downgrades, and separations in multinationals

    • joint work with Linda Borrs (IAB) and Johann Eppelsheimer (IAB)
    • Abstract: We use linked employer-employee data to estimate the impact of firms' foreign direct investment (FDI) into a low-wage country on workers' job stability in a high-wage country. We are the first to consider internal (i.e., within-firm) job transitions. Specifically, we examine the impact of German firms' FDI into the Czech Republic on the likelihood of onshore employees up- or downgrading to occupations that are more or less intensive in analytical and interactive tasks. To do so, we match firms with similar investing probabilities. We use this sample to estimate proportional hazards models to retrieve the dynamic effects on workers. We find that FDI increases the average likelihood of upgrades and downgrades by 17% and 19%, respectively. These effects are the strongest for jobs with low shares of nonroutine and interactive tasks, and they increase over time. They become substantial two years after the investment and reach 32-46% and 35-48%, respectively. FDI does not increase the hazard of worker--firm separations. Our results highlight the importance of internal firm restructuring, which enables firms to satisfy their altered domestic labor needs after FDI.
    • European Economic Review, 2023, 152, 104332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2022.104332

     

    FDI and Onshore Task Composition

    Evidence from German Firms with Affiliates in the Czech Republic

    • joint work with Mathilde Le Moigne (Princeton University)
    • Abstract: How does a firm's foreign direct investment (FDI) in a low-wage country changes its onshore task demand in a high-wage country? Is the shift more intensive for jobs that have been assigned offshorable by previous literature?
      We tackle these questions using a difference-in-difference (DiD) approach of a matched sample, in which control and actual FDI-engaging firms from Germany feature very similar propensities to conduct FDI in the Czech Republic. To mitigate a potential selection bias, we develop a new matching procedure that matches firms on their propensities to conduct FDI, whereby these propensity scores are estimated using a post-lasso logit model with the highest predictive power. The logit model further provides insight that high task intensities of managing, administration, and labor legislation play a major role for firms to engage in the international expansion. Our results from the DiD estimation are that relative to firms without any affiliates, the multinational enterprises (MNEs) react to the FDI with increasing intensities of typical headquarter activities such as managing, analyzing, and negotiating. We also find sector-specific decreases, such as the reduction of typical production tasks (monitoring, producing, measuring) in manufacturing MNEs or typical service tasks (informing, medical, repairing) in service MNEs. Using already established classifications, the occupations associated with this downturn are not necessarily declared as offshorable.
    • Journal for Labour Market Research, 2023, 57, 25. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12651-023-00346-7

     

    The Geography of Refugee Shocks

    • joint work with Albrecht Glitz (University Pompeu Fabra), Joan Monras (University Pompeu Fabra), Lukas Hörnig (RWI)

     

    An Overview of Data Protection Strategies for Individual-level Geocoded Data

    • joint work with Jörg Drechsler (IAB) and Maike Steffen (IAB)
    • Abstract: In response to a growing need for small-scale geographic information in various research areas, data-collecting institutions are increasingly georeferencing individual-level data. However, due to confidentiality concerns, external researchers typically have very limited access to these data if at all, resulting in a substantial loss of informational value. A growing body of literature on data protection strategies for geocoded data attempts to find solutions for the tradeoff between privacy protection and utility preservation of the individual-level data. The purpose of this paper is to systematically collect and review the literature in the field and to offer a classification of existing methods. Various strategies for estimating the utility and the remaining risk of disclosure for the protected data are also discussed.
    • United Nations Economic Commission for Europe; Conference of European Statisticians

    Segregation and Regional Mobility