Essays in applied micro-econometrics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis consists of three chapters using micro-econometric techniques to evaluate German public policy and policy reforms regarding their impact on individuals and the labour market. Although the selection of topics might seem broad, the general theme linking my results is an interest in informing policymakers about the efficacy of reforms frequently discussed in the public debate in Germany in recent years. In chapter 1, I use administrative labour market data to estimate the effect of compressing instructional time in school on labour market outcomes for young adults. Leveraging the staggered introduction of the so-called G8 reform, I compare students on the German academic school track who graduated under a compressed curriculum to those who did not. Using a robust difference-in-differences strategy, I find that the reform reduced labour market earnings by 14% over the sample mean six years after graduating from high school. The decline is persistent and primarily driven by changes to the curriculum inducing higher weekly workloads, while age effects play a minor role. A range of alternative specifications and placebo tests confirm my main findings. In chapter 2, I use German survey data to investigate whether married couples shift the timing of martial breakup to reduce income tax liabilities. In Germany, married couples are eligible for income tax rebates if they are married for at least one day in the calendar year. This creates an incentive to delay the breakup date into the next calendar year. I show that a large proportion of married couples report a breakup in the first quarter of a year, especially in January, between 1984 and 2017. I find that a EUR 1,000 increase in the tax rebate is associated with an increase in the probability of a breakup occurring in the first quarter by 2.9 percentage points, which is consistent with spouses postponing their separation date in response to tax deductions. I find no differences in the probability of divorce regardless of the timing of the breakup. In chapter 3, I estimate the effect of childcare provision on labour market outcomes of mothers
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.043 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.029 | 0.014 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".