Does Temporary Agency Work Provide a Stepping Stone to Regular Employment?

Based on administrative data from the federal employment office in Germany, we apply matching techniques to estimate the stepping-stone function of temporary agency work for the unemployed, i.e. its short-run and long-run effects on their future employment prospects. Our results show that unemployed workers who take up a job in the temporary work agency (TWA) industry are on average more likely than unemployed workers not joining TWA work to be in agency employment in the four year period these workers are tracked after entering TWA work. However, we find no discernable effects on the probabilities of being either in regular employment or registered unemployment. Our findings therefore do not lend support to the stepping-stone function of temporary agency work.Temporary work agencies, stepping stone, evaluation, matching

Does Temporary Agency Work Provide a Stepping Stone to Regular Employment?

Based on administrative data from the federal employment office in Germany, we apply matching techniques to estimate the stepping-stone function of temporary agency work for the unemployed, i.e. its short-run and long-run effects on their future employment prospects. Our results show that unemployed workers who take up a job in the temporary work agency (TWA) industry are on average more likely than unemployed workers not joining TWA work to be in agency employment in the four year period these workers are tracked after entering TWA work. However, we find no discernable effects on the probabilities of being either in regular employment or registered unemployment. Our findings therefore do not lend support to the stepping-stone function of temporary agency work.Temporary work agencies, stepping stone, evaluation, matching

Public Smoking Bans, Youth Access Laws, and Cigarette Sales at Vending Machines

Tobacco control policies have proliferated in many countries in recent years, in particular youth access laws and public smoking bans. The eff ectiveness of youth access laws is still disputed, however, as are the costs of public smoking bans to the hospitality industry. Using a unique data set on cigarette sales at more than 100k vending machines that provides fi rst objective evidence on the outgoing and customer behavior of smokers, we study both outcome dimensions by investigating several recent tobacco control measures in Germany. We fi nd a large negative eff ect on cigarette sales of a nation-wide introduction of devices for electronic age verifi cation in cigarette vending machines, particularly at machines placed outdoors and in localities that are strongly frequented by youths. In contrast, there is no evidence that a country-wide smoking ban in federal buildings aff ected cigarette sales in these premises and only weak evidence that a recent rise in the minimum legal smoking age aff ected cigarette purchases by youths. Finally, state-level smoking bans appear to have reduced indoor sales of cigarettes at vending machines, especially in bars. However, the magnitude of the estimated eff ect is rather modest, suggesting that businesses in the hospitality industry are unlikely to have been aff ected severely.Smoking; tobacco control; youth and second-hand smoking; hospitality industry

Inside the Black Box of Temporary Help Agencies

Based on a new panel dataset created in close cooperation with one of the largest temporary help agencies (THAs) in Germany, this paper presents novel evidence on key aspects of temporary agency work, a segment of the labor market that despite its growing importance remains underresearched. In particular, we provide detailed information on the internal operation of a THA and the allocative function it performs both as an intermediate demander and as a final supplier of labor in this submarket. In addition to offering first examination of effective wage and fee schedules, we document, among others, the rise of on-call hiring, recalls and fixed-term contracts in the recruitment of workers, the reasons for job termination, as well as the volume of labor actually contracted per worker and per worker-client match. We show that the THA manages to utilize effectively its workforce in assignments and keeps idle labor at a minimum. In fact, more than a third of workers exhibit multiple client engagements. One-off recruitment and dismissal costs per worker can thus effectively be spread across different clients.temporary help, agency work, flexible employment

Inside the Black Box of Temporary Help Agencies

Based on a new panel dataset created in close cooperation with one of the largest temporary help agencies (THAs) in Germany, this paper presents novel evidence on key aspects of temporary agency work, a segment of the labor market that despite its growing importance remains underresearched. In particular, we provide detailed information on the internal operation of a THA and the allocative function it performs both as an intermediate demander and as a final supplier of labor in this submarket. In addition to offering first examination of effective wage and fee schedules, we document, among others, the rise of on-call hiring, recalls and fixed-term contracts in the recruitment of workers, the reasons for job termination, as well as the volume of labor actually contracted per worker and per worker-client match. We show that the THA manages to utilize effectively its workforce in assignments and keeps idle labor at a minimum. In fact, more than a third of workers exhibit multiple client engagements. One-off recruitment and dismissal costs per worker can thus e¤ectively be spread across different clients.temporary help, agency work, flexible employment.

Men,Women, and the Ballot – Woman Suffrage in the United States

Woman suffrage led to the greatest enfranchisement in the history of the United States. BeforeWorldWar I, however, suffrage states remained almost exclusively confined to the American West. The reasons for this pioneering role of theWest are still unclear. Studying the timing of woman suffrage adoption at state level, we find that states in which women were scarce (the West) enfranchised their women much earlier than states in which the sex ratio was more balanced (the rest of the country). High sex ratios in the West, that is high ratios of grantors to grantees, reduced the political costs and risks to male electorates and legislators of extending the franchise. They are also likely to have enhanced female bargaining power and may have made woman suffrage more attractive in the eyes of western legislators that sought to attract more women to their states. Our finding of a reduced-form inverse relationship between the relative size of a group and its success in securing the ballot may be of use also for the study of other franchise extensions and for inquieries into the dynamics of political power sharing more generally.Woman suffrage, democratization, political economy, sex ratio

Much Ado About Nothing? – Smoking Bans and Germany’s Hospitality Industry

Over the last years, public smoking bans have been introduced in most European countries. Unlike elsewhere, in Germany such bans were introduced at state level at diff erent points in time, which provides important intra-country regional variation that can be exploited to identify the eff ects of such bans on the hospitality industry. Using monthly data from a compulsory survey carried out by the German Federal Statistical Offi ce, we study the short-run eff ects that these bans had on establishments’ sales. In contrast to the largely US-based literature, we fi nd that smoke-free policies had a negative (yet moderate) eff ect on establishment sales. Closure rates of businesses in the hospitality industry, however, were not signifi cantly aff ected by the introduction of state smoking bans.smoking bans; sales; intra-country regional variation

World War II, Missing Men, and Out-of-wedlock Childbearing

Based on county-level census data for the German state of Bavaria in 1939 and 1946, we use World War II as a natural experiment to study the effects of sex ratio changes on out-of-wedlock fertility. Our findings show that war-induced shortfalls of men to women significantly increased the nonmarital fertility ratio at mid century, a result that proves robust to the use of alternative sex ratio definitions, post-war measures of fertility, and estimation samples. The magnitude of this increase furthermore appears to depend on the future marriage market prospects that women at the time could expect to face in the not-too-distant future. We find the positive effect on the nonmarital fertility ratio of a decline in the sex ratio to be strongly attenuated by the magnitude of county- level shares of prisoners of war. Unlike military casualties and soldiers missing in action, prisoners of war had a sizeable positive probability of returning home from the war. Both current marriage market conditions, therefore, and foreseeable improvements in the future marriage market prospects of women appear to have influenced fertility behavior in the immediate aftermath of World War II.World War II, Sex Ratios, Out-Of-Wedlock Births.

Biases in Estimates of the Smoking Wage Penalty

Empirical studies on the earnings effects of tobacco use have found significant wage penalties attached to smoking. We produce evidence that suggests that these estimates are significantly upward biased. The bias arises from a general failure in the literature to control for the past smoking behavior of individuals. 2SLS earnings estimates show that the smoking wage penalty is reduced by as much as a third, if past smoking of individuals is controlled for. Our results also point to significant wage gains for individuals that quit smoking, a finding that is of substantial interest, given the lack of evidence on the earnings effects of smoking cessation.Smoking, Wages, Earnings Regressions