Peter Njekwa Ryberg (p)

Andrea Caragliu

Automation technologies diffuse unevenly across time and space and their impacts on employment may differ across subnational regions, due to the latter being shaped by different past and current economic structures. The purpose of this paper is to utilize these economic structures to explore the link between firm-level automation technology adoption in manufacturing and municipal-level employment outcomes. Using Swedish register data featuring firms and their respective establishments, and workers during 1997-2021 and a shift-share instrumental variable framework, robust results are retrieved indicating an associated positive relationship between automation and employment growth in manufacturing. When allowing for municipal heterogeneity, the relationship weakens in magnitude in the manufacturing dense and rural parts of the country. Negative local employment spillovers in nonmanufacturing sectors are detected. The increase in manufacturing automation brings no impact on overall municipal employment growth. These findings suggest that manufacturing automation preserves jobs while overall municipal employment growth remains unaffected, possibly due to worker reallocations between automating manufacturing establishments and nonmanufacturing establishments.

Ann-Marie Sommerfeld (p)

Andrea Caragliu

Exploiting the age-at-enrollment policies in 16 German states as exogenous source of variation, I examine whether the schooling of the oldest child in a migrant household affects parents’ integration. My analysis links administrative records on primary school enrollment cutoff dates with micro data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP). Using a regression discontinuity design around the school enrollment
cutoff and an instrumental variable approach I show that children’s schooling improves the integration of parents along several dimensions, such as labor market outcomes, financial
worries, and German language skills. Labor market outcomes are most positively affected for mothers. Additional analysis of underlying mechanisms suggests that results are driven by gains in disposable time and exposure to the German language and culture.

Tatjana Neuhuber (p), Antonia E. Schneider

Andrea Caragliu

Livability has become a prominent topic in both academic discourse and policymaking. This paper investigates how societal stratification in livability varies based on residual income and access to social infrastructure and explores the factors that drive these differences. Initially, we calculate the residual income for households across different regions of Austria. Subsequently, we create composite indicators to measure the availability and accessibility of social infrastructure in each municipality. Using a Finite Mixture Model (FMM), we analyze how households cluster based on these factors and employ a Bayesian multinomial logistic model to identify the socioeconomic variables such as household composition, education, and employment status that influence cluster membership.
Our findings reveal significant clustering related to residual income and accessibility of social infrastructure, indicating clear societal stratification in livability. Socioeconomic variables and regional context notably influence this clustering. These findings highlight important implications, particularly regarding the potential impact of privatizing public services on household residual income, especially for low-income households that depend on public infrastructure.