The Effect of a Compressed High School Curriculum on University Performance

A recent education reform in Germany reduced the duration of academic high school education by one year but left the curriculum, and total class time unchanged. We use a unique data set of university students to investigate the effects of this reduction in years of schooling on academic achievements at the tertiary level. By exploiting variation in the implementation of the reform across school types over time, we isolate the reform e ect from cohort, state, and school type effects. Our results suggest that the reform lowers the opportunity costs of schooling and facilitates an earlier labor market entry as we find no detrimental effects while students are one year younger on average

The Impact of Family Friendly Workplaces on Satisfaction and Work

This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of family-friendly firm policies on satisfaction and working time of parents. The focus of this study is on two specific firm policies: Childcare support and flexible working schedules. We exploit the fact that since the mid 2000s an increasing share of employers react to their employees' needs by offering a family-friendly work environment. These changes over time allow us to identify causal effects of the two family-friendly policies. Identification is based on a difference-in-differences strategy in a panel dataset on families with young children in Germany (FiD). The model is combined with matching to decrease potential bias arising from observable factors correlated with the offer of family-friendly policies and the change in the considered outcomes. We find that for mothers, childcare support strongly increases satisfaction related to childcare and additionally raises life and job satisfaction. Particularly middle and lower educated mothers increase their working time when childcare support is offered. The effects are mainly driven by immediate use of childcare support. Flexible working schedules only affect mothers' job satisfaction, but do not seem to change family related satisfaction and working time. Fathers show nearly no reactions to either childcare support or flexible working schedules. Childcare support seems to be a truly family-friendly practice and valued by mothers, while this is not so clear for flexible working schedules

Helping with the kids? How family-friendly workplaces affect parental well-being and behavior

Despite political efforts, balancing work and family life is still challenging. This paper provides novel evidence on the effect of firm level interventions that seek to reduce the work-life conflict. The focus is on how a specific workplace policy, namely childcare support, affects the well-being, working time, and caring behavior of mothers with young children. We exploit the fact that since the mid 2000s an increasing number of employers have become proactive and implemented more family-friendly workplaces. These changes over time allow us to identify causal effects of childcare support using a difference-in-differences approach combined with matching. Based on a large panel dataset on families with children in Germany (FiD), we find evidence pointing to welfare enhancing effects of childcare support, as it strongly increases both childcare satisfaction and job satisfaction. In particular mothers who worked limited hours before the introduction, possibly due to constraints, increase their working time and use formal care more intensively. Satisfaction levels are also more strongly affected if mothers are career-orientated. In comparison, flexible work schedules, another family-friendly policy, only affect job satisfaction. Paternal well-being and behavior is not affected by the workplace policy

The Effect of Early Universal Daycare on Child Weight Problems

As the number of young children in daycare increases, people start to worry about the effect of early non-parental care. This is of special relevance as investments in the early periods of life are shown to be most important for a child's long term development. Based on the German national health survey for children, we study the impact of daycare in pre-kindergarten-age on weight problems and gross motor skills of children aged five to nine. This dataset has the advantage to provide objective child development measures. Our results are thus not prone to reporting bias. We estimate the effect of early daycare based on a non-linear instrumental variable strategy, by exploiting regional differences in subsidized centerbased care for zero to three year old children as the source of exogenous variation. Our OLS estimates reveal only very weak differences and do not hint at an increase in weight problems due to early use of daycare. The estimated local average treatment effects even indicate that early daycare leads to more desirable physical development for children 'at the margin'. Further analyses suggest that we do not estimate an effect for the most advantaged children, as the caring decision in families with low and medium income and with an overweight father seem to react most strongly to differences in daycare supply

Firm Heterogeneity and Choice of Ownership Structure: An Empirical Analysis of German FDI in India

We contribute to the literature on the heterogeneity of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and the relevance of firm characteristics for analyzing the determinants of outward foreign direct investment (FDI). The focus is on the role of firm-level heterogeneity when MNEs decide on the share of ownership in foreign affiliates. We combine two firm-specific datasets on German MNEs with varying equity stakes in Indian affiliates. The impact of firm characteristics on ownership shares is assessed in the context of OLS and fractional logit models, controlling for industry and location characteristics. We show that the effect of several characteristics differs between the establishment of new affiliates by German MNEs and their engagement in already existing Indian firms. Most notably, the productivity of the German parents matters only for ownership shares in new affiliates.multinational enterprises, firm characteristics, Indian locations, German FDI; ownership share

Familienfreundlichkeit in Unternehmen: Status Quo in Deutschland und Forschungsstand

Die Erwerbstätigkeit von Müttern hat in Deutschland sowie in den meisten industrialisierten Ländern in den vergangenen Jahren stetig zugenommen. In Deutschland ist die Erwerbstätigkeit von Frauen mit Kindern von 59 Prozent im Jahr 2000 auf rund 66 Prozent im Jahr 2012 angestiegen (BMFSFJ 2014). Der Großteil der erwerbstätigen Mütter geht jedoch nach wie vor einer Teilzeitbeschäftigung nach. Dies kann ein Hinweis darauf sein, dass die Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Familie nicht ausreichend gewährleistet ist. Tatsächlich berichten viele Eltern, dass sich Familie und Beruf in Deutschland nur schwer vereinbaren lassen (z.B. Kotowska et al. 2010, Müller et al. 2013). Auch für die USA lässt sich zeigen, dass Frauen, die Karriere und Familie gleichzeitig unter einen Hut bringen möchten, eine geringere Lebenszufriedenheit aufweisen, als Frauen, welche nur eines der beiden Ziele verfolgen (Bertrand 2013). In Deutschland, wie auch in anderen Industrieländern, reagieren immer mehr Unternehmen auf die Bedürfnisse ihrer Arbeitnehmer und versuchen mithilfe von familienfreundlichen Maßnahmen qualifizierte Fachkräfte zu gewinnen bzw. an ihr Unternehmen zu binden (z.B. Seils & Kaschowitz 2015). Zu der Frage, welche Maßnahmen Unternehmen in Deutschland ergreifen und inwiefern familienfreundliche Maßnahmen in Betrieben die elterlichen Arbeitsentscheidungen und die persönliche Zufriedenheit beeinflussen, gibt es für Deutschland bisher kaum repräsentative Forschungsergebnisse. Vor allem fehlt es an empirisch fundierten Analysen, welche auf einen Kausalzusammenhang zwischen familienfreundlichen Arbeitsplätzen einerseits und Zufriedenheit oder Arbeitsverhalten der Arbeitnehmer andererseits schließen lassen