Career Changers in Teaching Jobs: A Case Study Based on the Swiss Vocational Education System

This study investigates the determinants and motives of professionals who change career to vocational teaching. The framework for this study is the Swiss vocational education system, which requires that teachers of vocational subjects must have a prior career in that specific field. Thus, to work in teaching, every vocational teacher has to change his or her initial career. This paper focuses on the relevance of monetary motives for changing a career to teaching. Using a unique data set of trainee teachers, we show that professionals who change their careers to teaching earned on average more in their first career than comparable workers in the same occupation. Our findings additionally demonstrate that the average career changer still expects to earn significantly more as a teacher than in the former career. However, the study shows substantial heterogeneity and a zero wage elasticity of the teacher supply, suggesting that non-monetary motives are more relevant for career change than monetary factors.career change, occupational change, rate of return to education, wage differentials, teacher wages, vocational education and training

Obtaining Record Linkage Consent: Results from a Wording Experiment in Germany

Many sample surveys ask respondents for consent to link their survey information with administrative sources. There is significant variation in how linkage requests are administered and little experimental evidence to suggest which approaches are useful for achieving high consent rates. A common approach is to emphasize the positive benefits of linkage to respondents. However, some evidence suggests that emphasizing the negative consequences of not consenting to linkage is a more effective strategy. To further examine this issue, we conducted a gain-loss framing experiment in which we emphasized the benefit (gain) of linking or the negative consequence (loss) of not linking one’s data as it related to the usefulness of their survey responses. In addition, we explored a sunk-prospective costs rationale by varying the emphasis on response usefulness for responses that the respondent had already provided prior to the linkage request (sunk costs) and responses that would be provided after the linkage request (prospective costs). We found a significant interaction between gain-loss framing and the sunk-prospective costs rationale: respondents in the gain-framing condition consented to linkage at a higher rate than those in the loss-framing condition when response usefulness was emphasized for responses to subsequent survey items. Conversely, the opposite pattern was observed when response usefulness was emphasized for responses that had already been provided: loss-framing resulted in a higher consent rate than the gain-framing, but this result did not reach statistical significance

Credit Supply, Firms, and Earnings Inequality

We study the distributional effects of a monetary policy-induced firm-level credit supply shock on individual wages and employment. To this end, we construct a novel dataset that links worker employment histories to firms' bank credit relationships in Germany. We document that firms in relationships with banks that were more exposed to negative monetary policy rates in 2014 see a relative reduction in credit supply. A negative credit supply shock in turn is associated with lower firm-level average wages and employment. These effects are concentrated among distinct worker groups within firms, with initially lower-paid workers more likely to be fired and initially higher-paid workers more likely to receive wage cuts. At the same time, wages decline by more at initially higher-paying firms. Consequently, wage inequality within and between firms decreases. Our results suggest that monetary policy has important distributional effects in the labor market

Data Analysis Techniques for Fan Performance in Highly-Distorted Flows from Boundary Layer Ingesting Inlets

The design of a unique distortion-tolerant fan for a high-bypass ratio boundary-layer ingesting propulsion system has been completed and a rig constructed and tested in the NASA Glenn 8x6 wind tunnel. Processing the data from the experiment presented some interesting challenges because of the complexity of the experimental setup and the flow through the test rig. The experiment was run in three phases, each of which employed a unique complement of inlet throat and fan face instrumentation to avoid the blockage that would have resulted from simultaneously installing all of the rakes. The measurement from the individual test points were subsequently combined to compute the overall stage performance. A CFD model of the experiment was used to gain understanding of the flow field and to test some of the techniques proposed for interpolating and extrapolating the measurements into regions where measurements were not made. This capability became extremely useful when it was discovered that there was an unexpected total temperature distortion in the tunnel. The CFD model was modified by inserting a total temperature profile at the upstream boundary that mimicked the measured distortion where measurements were available and that CFD solution was used to investigate methods to infer the complete total temperature field at the fan face

Measuring the use of human resources practices and employee attitudes : the linked personnel panel

This paper introduces a new data source available for HRM researchers and personnel economists, the Linked Personnel Panel (LPP). The LPP is a longitudinal and representative employer-employee data set covering establishments in Germany and designed for quantitative empirical HR research. The LPP offers a unique structure. First, the data set combines employer and employee surveys that can be matched to each other. Second, it can also be linked to a number of additional administrative data sets. Third, the LPP covers a wide range of firms and workers from different backgrounds. Finally, because of its longitudinal dimension, the LPP should facilitate the study of causal effects of HR practices. The LPP employee survey uses a number of established scales to measure job characteristics and job perceptions, personal characteristics, employee attitudes towards the organisation and employee behaviour. This paper gives an overview of both the employer and employee survey and outlines the definitions, origins and statistical properties of the scales used in the individual questionnaire

Management practices, workforce selection and productivity

Recent research suggests that much of the cross-firm variation in measured productivity is due to differences in use of advanced management practices. Many of these practices – including monitoring, goal setting, and the use of incentives – are mediated through employee decision-making and effort. To the extent that these practices are complementary with workers’ skills, better-managed firms will tend to recruit higher-ability workers and adopt pay practices to retain these employees. We use a unique data set that combines detailed survey data on the management practices of German manufacturing firms with longitudinal earnings records for their employees to study the relationship between productivity, management, worker ability, and pay. As documented by Bloom and Van Reenen (2007) there is a strong partial correlation between management practice scores and firm-level productivity in Germany. In our preferred TFP estimates only a small fraction of this correlation is explained by the higher human capital of the average employee at better-managed firms. A larger share (about 13%) is attributable to the human capital of the highest-paid workers, a group we interpret as representing the managers of the firm. And a similar amount is mediated through the pay premiums offered by better-managed firms. Looking at employee inflows and outflows, we confirm that better-managed firms systematically recruit and retain workers with higher average human capital. Overall, we conclude that workforce selection and positive pay premiums explain just under 30% of the measured impact of management practices on productivity in German manufacturing

Homeoffice in Zeiten von Corona : in vielen Berufen gibt es bislang ungenutzte Potenziale

Das Arbeiten von zu Hause erlebt angesichts der Corona-Krise einen ungeahnten Schub. Tatsächlich wurde das Potenzial an beruflichen Tätigkeiten, die auch im Homeoffice erledigt werden könnten, schon zuvor keineswegs ausgeschöpft und kann auch gegenwärtig noch nicht voll genutzt werden. Neben den aktuell in den Hintergrund rückenden Vorbehalten von Arbeitgebern als auch Beschäftigten könnte auch der Abbau technischer Hürden dazu beitragen, die Möglichkeiten für Homeoffice zu erweitern

Arbeiten vor und während der Pandemie

Die Art wie wir arbeiten unterlag schon immer einem gewissen Wandel, von der Industrialisierung über die Entstehung und Konsolidierung des Sozialstaats bis hin zu Digitalisierung und Flexibilisierung der heutigen Zeit ("Arbeiten 4.0"). Dennoch scheint sich dieser Wandel in den letzten Jahren beschleunigt zu haben, insbesondere im Zuge der von der Corona-Pandemie geprägten vergangenen zwei Jahre. Dieser Bericht stellt daher die Veränderungen "erlebter Arbeit" zwischen 2013 und 2021 dar, betrachtet somit also sowohl die Zeit vor als auch während der Pandemie. Dabei stehen die Beschäftigtenperspektive und somit subjektive Dimensionen im Fokus

Die Dynamik der Lohnungleichheit in deutschen Betrieben: Sonderbericht

Lohnungleichheit ist ein breit diskutiertes Thema nicht nur in Deutschland. Dieser Forschungsbericht konzentriert sich auf die innerbetriebliche Lohndispersion und zeigt neben der Entwicklung in LPP Betrieben seit 2012 Unterschiede zwischen Branchen und Hoch- und Niedriglohnbetrieben auf. Außerdem werden relevante Einflussfaktoren identifiziert. Abschließend zeigt der Bericht, dass die hohe Einkommenszufriedenheit von Beschäftigten in LPP-Betrieben hauptsächlich ausschließlich mit dem eigenen Lohn und dem betrieblichen Durchschnittslohn korreliert und nicht mit der betrieblichen Lohndispersion.Wage inequality is a widely discussed topic not only in Germany. This research report focuses on intra-firm wage dispersion and shows differences between industries and high- and low-wage firms in addition to the development in LPP firms since 2012. It also identifies relevant influencing factors. Finally, the report shows that the high income satisfaction of employees in LPP establishments is solely correlated with employee’s own wage and the establishment average wage and not with the establishment wage dispersion

Mobiles Arbeiten von zu Hause

Dieser Bericht fasst Ergebnisse aus dem Linked Personnel Panel (LPP) zu Homeoffice zusammen. Für die Jahre 2013 bis 2017 zeigen die Ergebnisse einen leichten Anstieg der Homeoffice-Nutzung in Deutschland auf 23 Prozent. Durch die Corona-Pandemie stieg der Anteil der Beschäftigten, die von zu Hause arbeitet, sprunghaft auf 50 Prozent, dabei wurden technische Hürden und Bedenken sowohl auf Seiten der Betriebe als auch bei Beschäftigten abgebaut. Viele Beschäftigten sammelten in dieser Zeit erstmals Erfahrungen mit dem Arbeiten von zu Hause. Sehr wahrscheinlich werden diese Erfahrungen und die in kürzester Zeit reduzierten technischen Hürden die Arbeitswelt nachhaltig verändern. Die Langzeitwirkungen bleiben daher ein wichtiger Gegenstand der Forschung zu Homeoffice.This report summarizes findings from the Linked Personnel Panel (LPP) on working from home. From 2013 to 2017, the results show a slight increase in working from home in Germany to 23 percent. The Corona pandemic caused the share of employees working from home to rise to 50 percent, while technical hurdles and concerns on the part of both companies and employees were reduced. Many employees gained their first experience of working from home during this period. It is very likely that these new experiences and the technical hurdles reduced over a very short period of time will have a lasting impact which will and should be part of future research