Increased wage-setting flexibility is associated with higher firm survival rates in both regions.

However, these results vary in areas where firms face less labor market competition (in our case in the South vs the Centre-North of Italy): there, opting into contracts with lower wage floors leads to BOTH lower wages and lower employment.

Collective bargaining shapes labor markets, yet we know little about its effects. In our new WP, we track workers shifted to contracts with lower wage floors: wages fall, but employment rises, suggesting adjustments along the firm's labor demand curve.

Excited to be visiting Cornell University for the next few days!

David de la Croix's keynote closes the workshop. Jointly with Thomas Baudin, he shows how 18th-century Northern European high-human-capital families escaped the Malthusian trap, shifting from larger to smaller families, prioritizing education of children over quantity.

Using Danish tax data, Chris Busch and coauthors show that spousal similarity in earnings determines income comovement and shapes how households respond to shocks. Spousal sorting across sectors and occupations is especially relevant to explain household earnings dynamics.

Why is fertility so high in sub-Saharan Africa? Paula Gobbi and coauthors reveal inheritance customs play a key role: impartible inheritance (land to one heir) raises fertility by 0.85 children, avoiding land division. Differences across inheritance rules disappear in more labor-intensive regions.

Fabian Kindermann and @mdoepke.bsky.social build a bargaining model that matches new trends in fertility decisions. They find that bargaining loss directly depends on marginal child penalty, which may follow an inverted U-shaped pattern.

Does early school tracking shape inequality? Suzanne Bellue and Lukas Mahler build an OLG model estimated on German data to assess the effects of school tracking on output and welfare. They find that delaying track choices boosts social mobility but may lower economic efficiency.

How did labor market competition shape women’s rights? In her keynote talk, Michèle Tertilt shows that 'protective laws' in the U.S. restricting women’s work arose—and later fell—due to political reactions to female labor competition.

Why does female labor supply respond more to spousal wage gaps in West Germany than in the East? @mariongousse.bsky.social explains the role of cultural identity differences through the lenses of a search and matching model of marriage formation and divorce, and intra-household resource allocation.

Optimistic about 'happily ever after'? Turns out, overoptimism about divorce lowers savings and increases inequality in marriages. Ursula Berresheim & David Koll show that rational expectations could increase assets, work hours, and human capital.

Then, our research unit presents the projects funded by @dfgpublic.bsky.social aimed at understanding of intra-household decisions for macro outcomes.

Learn more on ongoing research here: fqmg.de/miihd/

@leokaas.bsky.social @georgduernecker.bsky.social

Do spouses keep secrets about income? Using novel Dutch data @mdoepke.bsky.social and coauthors find that in couples where income info isn’t fully shared, an income boost tilts consumption balance towards the higher earner. Suggests private info shapes family dynamics more than we thought!

Monika Merz et al. examine how couples' labor supply is influenced by heterogeneous preferences and mutual insurance against wage shocks. Using the German Time-Use Survey, their model reveals that ignoring mutual insurance misses key male labor supply behavior

@maxblesch.bsky.social (@diw.de & @humboldtuni.bsky.social) et al. show that German women are overly optimistic about wage growth from part-time work, leading to higher part-time and flatter wage trajectories. A structural life-cycle model shows this bias significantly impacts earnings and welfare

Markus Poschke kicks off the workshop documenting how gendered time allocation in market, domestic, and care work varies across 50 countries. A macro model of household time use shows that variation in the division of non-market work is mainly shaped by a wedge indicating greater disutility for men