Research

Research

I am interested in the consequences of social policies for the world of work, how labor market institutions affect unemployment and poverty, and how changes in worker organization shape employment and wages in Europe and the United States.

Working Papers

Employing the unemployed of Marienthal: Evaluation of a guaranteed job program
(joint with Maximilian Kasy)
registered as AEARCTR-0006706.
Working Papers: Stone Center, IZA, CESifo, Oxford INET, Oxford Economics.
Selected media coverage
  English: The New Yorker, CNN, Financial Times, Forbes, Business Insider.
  German: Der Spiegel 1, 2, 3, Die Zeit 1, 2, Der Standard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ORF 1, 2, 3, 4.
  TV & radio: ARTE 1, 2, ARD, ZDF, ORF 1, 2, Deutschlandfunk 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Ö1 1, 2, 3.
Policy impact: Summary, UN, EU 1, 2, 3, 4, OECD 1, 2, 3, 4, ILO 1, 2, Governments: Italy, Austria.
Awards:
  ESRC Prize for Outstanding Early Career Impact
  Innovation in Politics Award
  Kurt Rothschild Main Prize
  WU International Research Fellowship, 2023
  Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy dissertation grant
  UC Berkeley Fellowship 2022/23 of the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation
recording slides podcast in English
recording slides podcast in German
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Abstract We evaluate a guaranteed job program launched in 2020 in Austria. Our evaluation is based on three approaches, pairwise matched randomization, a pre-registered synthetic control at the municipality level, and a comparison to individuals in control municipalities. This allows us to estimate direct effects, anticipation effects, and spillover effects.

We find positive impacts of program participation on economic and non-economic well-being, but not on physical health or preferences. At the municipality level, we find a large reduction of long-term unemployment, and no negative employment spillovers. There are positive anticipation effects on subjective well-being, status, and social inclusion. Program costs are fully matched by the increase of participant income.

Reframing Active Labor Market Policy: Field Experiments on Barriers to Program Participation
(joint with Anna Schwarz)
registered as AEARCTR-0007141.
Selected media coverage: Der Standard, Die Presse, Kurier.
Awarded the Austrian Economic Association (NOeG) Dissertation Fellowship.
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Abstract Governments struggle to attract unemployed workers to their widely offered job training programs. In a randomized field experiment with 11,000 job seekers, we investigate the barriers to participation in job training programs using information interventions designed to encourage participation. Raising awareness about the availability of job training increased program enrollment and completion by around 20%. Signaling program cost with an additional voucher to reduce psychological frictions increased enrollment equally while raising completion by 27%. Effects were sizeable and concentrated among women and low-income job seekers. Notably, increased job training did not result in higher employment or wages. These findings indicate that while low-cost informational interventions effectively boost participation, the overall success of job training programs in enhancing employment prospects hinges on their fundamental design.

Monopsony Power and Poverty: The Consequences of Walmart Supercenter Openings
(joint with Zachary Parolin, Clemente Pignatti, and Rafael Pintro Schmitt).
Media coverage: The Atlantic.

Abstract Prior research suggests that Walmart Supercenters exert substantial power over the low-wage labor market, though the consequences of Supercenter openings on household incomes and public finances are less clear. This study uses restricted-access Panel Study of Income Dynamics data from 1970 to 2019 to study how Walmart Supercenter openings affect poverty, tax liabilities, and receipt of income transfers. Using a stacked difference-in-differences approach, we find that the opening of a Supercenter leads to a 2 percentage point (16%) increase in poverty. This increase is channeled through declining annual earnings and persists for 10 years following the Supercenter’s entry. Increases in poverty are particularly strong for younger and less-educated adults, and for adults with pre-treatment incomes below the national median. Moreover, Walmart Supercenter openings lead to a $200 (or 16%) per household per year increase in government income transfers received, and a $920 (or 5%) per household per year decrease in tax revenues.

What Do Unemployed Workers Want: Guaranteed Jobs or Guaranteed Income?

Abstract This paper studies unemployed workers' support for two much-debated social policy innovations often positioned as rivals: a job guarantee and basic income. Leveraging an experimental design in a representative survey among unemployed workers as its main beneficiary group, the analysis finds broad support for both policies, guaranteed jobs and guaranteed income, though support is consistently higher for guaranteed jobs. For either policy, increasing the pay level yields strong increases in support. Crossing a critical threshold at the low-pay level just above average unemployment benefits, notably raises the willingness to accept guaranteed jobs, indicating a strong willingness to work for little monetary benefit. Support is more prevalent among disadvantaged people, whereas opposition to both policies is unaffected by the pay level among a small, steadfast minority, in more favorable socio-economic circumstances. The results suggest a shift in perspective to view both policies as complementary rather than competing strategies to strengthen the social safety net.

Countervailing Powers: Labor Unions Against the Buyer Power of Walmart Supercenters
(joint with Joshua Choper and Zachary Parolin).

Abstract We expand the sociological study of power struggles in labor markets to consider how the threat of buyer power affects the size and protective strength of worker power. We focus specifically on the interplay of local union membership and the entry of Walmart Supercenters, the archetype of a high-buyer-power employer. We study (1) whether greater worker power dissuades Walmart Supercenters from entering a local labor market, (2) whether a successful Supercenter entry subsequently erodes local union membership, and (3) whether unions provide a protective effect against declining earnings after a successful Supercenter entry. We apply stacked difference-in-difference estimates based on county-year variation in Walmart Supercenter openings using restricted-access Panel Study of Income Dynamics data. We find that Walmart Supercenters are less likely to enter a local labor market that has high levels of union membership, even when conditioning on attempted Walmart entries. When Walmart Supercenter openings do occur, union membership declines by an average of 5 percentage points, and is channeled through declining union membership in retail. Remaining union members are not protected against Walmart's downward pressure on earnings; in fact, annual earnings among workers who were unionized pre-treatment decline faster than for non-union members after a Walmart Supercenter opens. Worker power can be effective at preventing a rise in buyer power, but conditional on increases in buyer power, worker power tends to decline both in terms of size and protective strength. The sociological study of labor market power ought to consider how prevailing levels of buyer power can moderate the ability of organized labor to achieve its social and economic aims.

Power, Profits, and Pay: Unionization and Rent Sharing under Consensual Labor Relations
(joint with Emanuel List)
Awarded the OeNB Anniversary Fund Grant 2023 - 2025.

Abstract Unionization is well known to increase wages, often at the expense of firm profits, as documented in the context of adversarial labor relations. But does this hold true in more consensual settings? We are the first to access nationwide union membership records and link them to firm-level data to examine the relationship between unionization, wages, and firm performance in the service sector. Using fixed effects regressions and recentered influence function regressions, we find that in a consensual labor relations context, unionized firms exhibit both higher wages and greater productivity, with no significant decline in profits. Effects tend to be more pronounced for white collar than blue collar workers reflecting differences in organizing strength. We further show that works councils play a key role in boosting productivity among low-productivity firms, while union density is particularly influential in high-productivity firms, consistent with rent-sharing theories. Unionization raises wages most in low-productivity firms and independently of rent sharing, while rent sharing disproportionately benefits workers in high-productivity firms. Our findings are robust to using administrative data from tax registries. Taken together, our findings challenge the conventional view of unionization as a zero-sum game and underscore the role of unions in boosting productivity alongside pay in a context of consensual labor relations.

The Good Council: Deliberating inequality in a field experiment
(joint with Franziska Disslbacher, Martin Haselmayer, Severin Rapp, Franziska Windisch)
registered as AEARCTR-0013874.
Media coverage: New York Times 1, 2, Washington Post, BBC 1, 2, Financial Times.

Abstract This paper examines how deliberative democracy affects people's roles in democracy and their redistributive preferences in a polarized political environment. Using a pre-registered field experiment embedded in a citizens' assembly on wealth inequality and redistribution in Austria, we provide unique causal evidence separating selection from treatment effects in a deliberative setting. Participation in the citizens' assembly promoted convergence on specific redistributive policy designs, in particular agreement on a \euro1 million tax allowance, but had limited effects on overall support for wealth and inheritance taxation. Deliberation also did little to increase broader political engagement or efficacy. Moreover, we document that self-selection into the citizens' assembly prevails even after applying a modern selection algorithm designed to mitigate bias: individuals willing to engage were already more politically active and supportive of redistribution than the general population. These findings highlight both the potential of deliberation to foster informed agreement on redistributive policy design and its limitations in reaching beyond the already engaged and supportive.

Selected Work in Progress

Journal Publications

6) Declining Earnings Inequality, Rising Income Inequality: What Explains Discordant Inequality Trends in the United States?, Journal of Public Economics, 2025, 244, 105337.
(joint with Zachary Parolin and Nathan Wilmers)
Review: The Great Inequality Discordance Era by Tom VanHeuvelen.
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Abstract From 2010 to 2019, personal earnings inequality declined in the United States (U.S.) for the first time in decades, yet household income inequality continued to increase. Discordance between the inequality trends reached its highest rate in recent history. We introduce a framework to decompose differences in inequality trends. We find that 46% of post-2010 discordance in inequality trends is due to changing household composition, namely a larger share of young workers living with their parents and combining low (but increasing) personal earnings with high household incomes. The remaining discordance stems from increases in private income among higher-earning households and declining redistributive effects of government transfers. Declines in personal earnings inequality do not imply declines in household income inequality.

5) Beggaring Thy Co-Worker: Labor Market Dualization and the Wage Growth Slowdown in Europe, ILR Review, 2024, 77(5), 659-684.
(joint with Paul Ramskogler and Aleksandra Riedl)
Summary: VoxEU, Die Presse
Coverage: Ö1, Ö3, APA Science, Die Presse, Tiroler Tageszeitung, NEUE
Awards:
  Barnett Prize for the best paper of the year by a research student at DSPI, Oxford
  SASE / Digit 2022 Early Career Workshop Award.
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Abstract As temporary employment has become a pervasive feature of modern labor markets, reasons for wage growth have become less well understood. To determine whether these two phenomena are related, we investigate whether the dualized structure of labor markets affects macroeconomic developments. Specifically, we incorporate involuntary temporary workers into the standard wage Phillips curve to examine wage growth in 30 European countries for the period 2004-2017. Relying on individual-level data to adjust for a changing employment composition, we show, for the first time, that the incidence of involuntary temporary workers has strong negative effects on aggregate wage growth. This effect, which we name the competition effect, is particularly pronounced in countries where wage bargaining institutions are weak. Our findings shed further light on the reasons for the secular slowdown of wage growth after the global financial crisis.

4) Capturing the COVID-19 Crisis through Public Health and Social Measures Data Science, Scientific Data, 2022, 9, 520.
(joint with Cindy Cheng, Amélie Desvars-Larrive, Bernhard Ebbinghaus, Thomas Hale, Alex Howes, Luca Messerschmidt, Angeliki Nika, Steve Penson, Anna Petherick, Hanmeng Xu, Alexander John Zapf, Yuxi Zhang, and Sophia Alison Zweig).
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Abstract In response to COVID-19, governments worldwide are implementing public health and social measures (PHSM) that substantially impact many areas beyond public health. The new field of PHSM data science collects, structures, and disseminates data on PHSM; here, we report the main achievements, challenges, and focus areas of this novel field of research.

3) Welfare state support during the COVID-19 pandemic: Change and continuity in public attitudes towards social policies in Germany, European Policy Analysis, 2022, 8(3), 297–311.
(joint with Bernhard Ebbinghaus and Elias Naumann)
Coverage: Resolution Foundation.
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Abstract Our analysis asks whether the pandemic situation affects welfare state support in Germany. The pandemic has increased the health and income risks calling for welfare state intervention. While increased needs, more deservingness, and higher state responsibility during such a crisis would suggest augmented support generally and among those at risk, this might be a short-term effect and cost considerations could reverse this trend. We study public attitudes towards four key social policy areas based on the German Internet Panel (GIP). We use three waves prior and further three waves since the pandemic had been declared in March 2020. The analysis shows both continuity in the popularity of social policies, in particular health and pensions, and some short-term increase in support for unemployment and family policies. The results after nearly 2 years suggest rather continuation with some thermostatic short-term boosts in support instead of any long-lasting change.

2) Cui bono – business or labour? Job retention policies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, 2022, 28(1), 47-64.
(joint with Bernhard Ebbinghaus)
Summary: LSE EUROPP Blog, Social Europe.
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Abstract Europe faces multiple challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic, including the problem of how to secure jobs and earnings. In our comparative analysis, we explore to what degree European welfare states were capable to respond to this crisis by stabilizing employment and income for working people. While short-time work was a policy tool already partly used in the Great Recession, job retention policies were further expanded or newly introduced across Europe due to the pandemic in 2020. However, cross-national variations persist in the way in which these schemes were designed and implemented across European welfare states, aiming more or less towards labour hoarding to avoid mass dismissal throughout the employment crisis. We distinguish between business support and labour support logics in explaining the variation in job retention policies across Europe. Continental, Mediterranean and Liberal welfare states fostered more labour hoarding than Nordic or Central and Eastern European countries.

Pre-PhD

1) A Reversing Case within Trajectories of Liberalisation: The revival of neo-corporatism in Austria since 2008, Momentum Quarterly - Journal for Societal Progress, 2017, 6(4), 210-229.
Summary: LSE NETUF Blog, Arbeit und Wirtschaft Blog.
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Abstract The overall dominating trend of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation has accelerated since the global economic crisis in 2008. Under the paradigm of competitiveness, a major policy goal has been the implementation of ‘structural reforms’ replacing neo-corporatist practices with market coordination. However, Austria’s coordinating institutions have been strengthened since 2008, contrasting the EU-wide liberalising trend. To explain this puzzle, government members’ biographies since 1983 were analysed, seven elite interviews conducted and official government documents evaluated. Under the logic of access, social partner organisations made active use of a ‘revolving door effect’, placing their employees as ‘interlocking directorates’ in government positions to gain influence on policies. For this ‘power-policy exchange’ social partners defended political compromises of the government and supported the weakened social democratic (SPÖ) and the conservative (ÖVP) party leadership. Such a ‘tactical alliance’ is fragile, as it depends on the interest constellation of actors involved, but outlines the remaining scope for domestic politics in an age of increased liberalising pressures from globalisation and EU integration.