Publications
Joint work with Moritz Hennicke and Lukas Mergele.
[preprint] [voxeu-column] [data]
Departing from communism, East Germany witnessed history’s most extensive privatization program. While the program sparked global interest as a blueprint for economic transformation, its effectiveness remains disputed. Using unique firm-level data, we examine the program’s objective to privatize the most competitive firms. We document that firms with higher baseline productivity are more likely to be privatized, yield higher prices, are more often acquired by West Germans, and are more likely to survive 20 years later. Inspecting the inner workings of the privatization agency, we illustrate challenges and lessons for how governments can design and implement industrial policy goals.
Media coverage: [Süddeutsche Zeitung] [MDR] [WDR] [FOCUS] [Spiegel Online] [LeSoir] [Freie Presse] [Neues Deutschland]
Summaries: [EBRD Transition Report Box 4.2] [ZEW Kurzexpertise] [ifo Schnelldienst] [Ökonomenstimme]
Working Papers
Joint work with Petra Moser. 2025.
Despite improvements in the allocation of talent, women continue to be underrepresented in innovation. Linking 70,000 scientists with their patents, we show that this underrepresentation continues a trend that was already in place for scientists born in the 1920s and that the low share of female scientists in patent-intensive STEM fields is the main driver of this persistent innovation gender gap. To estimate the causal effects of changes in the allocation of talent, we exploit an exogenous shock in participation due to WWII. As men enlisted in the war, the scarcity of male scientists pulled female scientists into STEM. Using variation in enlistment as an instrument for female entry, we find that one additional woman becomes an inventor for every five women entering STEM. Counterfactuals imply that, if women were as likely to work in STEM fields as men, the innovation gender gap would close in 38, rather than 118 years.
Joint work with Maria Waldinger. 2025.
What are the long-run effects of sustained exposure to air pollution? A unique natural experiment allows us to examine this question. In 1982, a sudden cut in Soviet oil forced Socialist East Germany to switch to highly polluting lignite coal. While the shock sharply increased air pollution near mining regions, authoritarian restrictions on mobility, housing, and jobs prevented sorting responses. We document persistent labor market impacts over three decades. Exposed individuals work less, earn lower wages, and retire earlier. Health is a key mechanism: infant mortality rises by 9% and the long-run incidence of asthma and cardiopathy increases significantly.
Joint work with Petra Moser. 2025.
What are the productivity effects of hiring underrepresented talent? We investigate this question in the context of World War II, when a shortage of male labor forced US firms to hire female scientists. Using new data on the scientific personnel of US firms, we exploit firm-level variation in exposure to enlistment as an instrument for female hires. Firms exposed to enlistment hired 1.4 times more female scientists during the war. Firms that hired at least 1 female scientist during the war produced 1 additional publication per 11 scientists on average after the war - but no additional patents. Data on the job titles of scientists document significant heterogeneity in the tasks that female scientists performed across firms. Firms that placed women in leadership roles experienced an increase in patenting, while firms that used women as librarians had an increase in publications, but not innovation.
Joint work with Bettina Peters. (Previous title: Incumbents and Entrants as Carriers of Productivity Growth and Innovation). 2023.
How does productivity growth change over the firm life cycle? Using pooled survey data from Germany, we study the evolution of firm productivity as an organizational learning process. Differentiating between internal learning through firms’ investments in own research and development and external learning through spillovers, we show that the relationship between learning and productivity growth changes substantially as firms age. While we find that young firms experience larger productivity gains from internal learning – own research and development – on average, their productivity gains are also significantly more volatile. Established firms, in turn, experience lower but more persistent productivity gains from internal learning and are less likely to change their position in the productivity distribution as a consequence of internal learning behavior. External learning through spillovers occurs mostly at established firms.
Work in Progress
Immigration, Culture, and Female Innovation. Joint work with Petra Moser.
Too Old for Math: WWII and the Origins of Economics as Quantitiative Social Science. Joint work with Petra Moser.
Role Models in Science: The Impact of Marie Curie's US Visits on Female Participation. Joint work with Niklas Halfar and Petra Moser.
Bidding for Firms. Joint work with Guido Friebel and Moritz Hennicke.
Personality, Leadership, and Turnover. Joint work with Guido Friebel and Elisa Rodepeter.