Research

Research

Publications in Peer-Reviewed Journals

Center-right Parties and Post-War Secondary Education, 2023, Comparative Politics 55(2), 193-218.
(joint with Jane Gingrich, Anja Giudici, and Tom Chevalier)

Abstract

The massification of secondary schooling constitutes the key educational project of the first post-war period. However, the resulting educational structures differed in terms of streaming and standardisation. Despite their historical opposition, center-right parties contributed to shaping these reforms. They opposed standardisation because their distributive strategy rested on support from elites and middle classes. However, their stance on streaming varied. Centre-right parties supported streaming when they were linked to teachers and private providers who opposed comprehensive reforms, but supported de-streaming where such groups aligned with the left. The analysis suggests that common partisan distributive aims can materialize as varied public service reforms, due their intersection with the productive environment. This paper shows these outcomes by tracing reforms shaped by center-right parties in Bavaria, France, and Italy.

Routine-biased technological change does not always lead to polarisation: Evidence from 10 OECD countries, 1995–2013, 2021, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 74 (August 2021).

Abstract

This article deals with a central paradox in the occupational polarisation literature: most scholars accept that technological change is biased against routine-intensive occupations, but in many countries, we do not see the pattern of occupational polarisation that the theory usually predicts. I argue and show empirically using a dataset of 10 OECD countries between 1995 and 2013 that technological change is both routine-biased and skill-biased, but that the result of routine-biased technological change may be occupational upgrading rather than polar- isation. This is due to differences in occupational routine-wage hierarchies: only where routine occupations cluster around the middle of the wage distribution are we likely to see polarisation. Where routine occupations are concentrated near the bottom of the wage hierarchy, upgrading occupational change is the norm. Based on research on the US, the former has been widely assumed, but it does not hold true in all countries. Overall, this article shows that much previous work on routine-biased technological change and polarisation was built on premises that do not travel well. This underscores the importance of comparative research for building and testing robust general theories.

Rethinking the measurement of occupational task content, 2021, The Economic and Labour Relations Review 33(1), 178-199.
Replication Data

Abstract

Which tasks workers perform on their jobs is critical for how technological change plays out in the labour market. This crucial insight sparked a large literature on routine-biased technological change which argues that routine occupations with a high share of repetitive and codifiable tasks are at risk of being automated. This paper makes the case for rethinking how we operationalise occupational task content. Based on survey data from 27 European countries between 2000 and 2015, I construct novel measures of routine task intensity and task complexity at the ISCO-88 2-digit level. Comparing them to existing operationalisations, I show that the proposed indices lead to improvements in several critical areas. The task dimensions have a straightforward theoretical interpretation as they capture the essence of the routine-bias and skill-bias arguments and are operationalised to better align theory and measurement. Furthermore, my indices create new opportunities for research by allowing researchers to analyse within-occupation change and country-differences in occupational task content. My paper can therefore contribute to a more sociologically informed understanding of technological change. The indices will benefit both sociologists and labour economists in investigating the nature of recent employment trends in Europe and formulating policies to deal with these challenges.

Working Papers

Why Is It So Hard to Counteract Wealth Inequality? Evidence from the United Kingdom
(joint with Ben Ansell, Laure Bokobza, Asli Cansunar, Mads Elkjaer, and Jacob Nyrup; R&R at World Politics)

Abstract

It has long been established that education and income affect people's political efficacy. Surprisingly, the role of wealth has been largely neglected in this literature. In this paper, we argue that housing wealth performs an insurance function and is thereby associated with higher internal and external political efficacy. Using data from the UKHLS and a representative survey including an experiment that was administered in England and Wales, we document a sizeable and statistically significant positive association of housing wealth and perceived wealth with efficacy. However, this relationship is less robust to sample attrition than between efficacy and education or income. We furthermore investigate whether informing respondents about house price inequality affects their efficacy. Our information treatments show no effect on external efficacy, while the effect on internal efficacy depends on the respondent correctly understanding the information: comprehenders show higher efficacy and non-comprehenders exhibit lower efficacy, compared to the control group. This suggests that views of government responsiveness (external efficacy) are not easily manipulated, while for people's view of their own understanding of politics (internal efficacy), comprehension matters more than content of the information treatment, in accordance with self-efficacy theory.

No Great Equalizer: Experimental Evidence on AI in the UK Labor Market
(joint with Jane Gingrich and Jasmine Bhatia; pre-print on SSRN)

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence is already transforming how people work. There is an emerging consensus in early studies that it reduces inequalities in performance within specific occupational groups; however, the question of whether these results generalize to the labor market at large remains open. We conducted a pre-registered online experiment with a representative sample of the UK working-age population. We randomly assigned participants to treatments that encouraged or discouraged the use of ChatGPT and then asked them to complete a set of tasks of varying complexity and ambiguity. We find that exposure to ChatGPT increased productivity in all tasks, with greater benefits observed in more complex and less ambiguous tasks. ChatGPT did reduce performance inequality *within* occupational groups in most cases, but not *between* educational or occupational groups. Inequalities between younger and older workers even increased. This study indicates that generative AI has the potential to improve worker performance in a wide array of tasks, but the impact on aggregate inequalities is likely to depend on task-specific features and workers' characteristics.

Housing and Political Efficacy
(joint with Mads Elkjaer and Ben Ansell)

Abstract

It has long been established that education and income affect people's political efficacy. Surprisingly, the role of wealth - in particular, housing wealth - has thus far been ignored in this literature. We theorise that housing performs several functions that increase political efficacy and test our arguments using data from three large representative surveys administered in the UK. We first argue that housing wealth provides a form of "self-insurance", which on the one hand facilitates civic engagement, and on the other hand raises people's stakes in the political process. In line with this argument, we find that homeowners, owners of more valuable houses, owners who have paid off their mortgage, and individuals who believe themselves to be higher in the housing wealth distribution all exhibit higher efficacy. Based on the literature on status expectations and the politics of resentment, we furthermore investigate whether intergenerational housing mobility affects political efficacy. However, we find no evidence that upward or downward intergenerational housing mobility affects efficacy beyond the first-order effect of homeownership. Finally, we study whether stronger local ties explain the higher efficacy of homeowners. Again, however, we find no evidence that length of tenancy in the area affects homeowners and renters differently. The results of this study show that housing - and by extension wealth more generally - constitutes a hitherto neglected but crucial determinant of political efficacy, chiefly by providing security which enables and incentivises engagement.

Housing Wealth and Tax Preferences Across Europe
(joint with Ben Ansell, Mads Elkjaer, and Jacob Nyrup)

Abstract

Despite being much more unequally distributed than income, wealth as a determinant of political preferences has received comparatively little attention. We address this gap by studying how housing wealth – the bulk of private wealth for most ordinary citizens – affects attitudes towards the taxation of income, inheritance, capital gains, and wealth. We leverage data from 7 European countries from an original survey including a conjoint and an information experiment. We find that compared to renters, homeowners and children of homeowners prefer less progressive taxation of wealth and inheritances. We can further show that this effect is driven by homeowners who own their house outright, while homeowners with a mortgage have more moderate preferences. People who believe they are wealthy relative to others are likewise less supportive of progressive taxation. This supports a view of homeowners as rational economic actors who are particularly opposed to taxes that predominantly affect them. In the conjoint, we find that people favour progressive but overall lower taxes. Furthermore, when forced to choose between joint income and inheritance tax schedules, income tax takes precedence, even for homeowners. Overall, this paper provides a comprehensive investigation of housing wealth and tax preferences in Europe and contributes to an increasingly salient public and academic debate.

Yesterday’s Model for Tomorrow’s Economy? The Effect of Firm-Based VET on Wage Inequality in the Knowledge Economy
(joint with Patrick Emmenegger)

Abstract

Dual vocational education and training (VET) systems are said to have beneficial economic effects. For instance, some studies have established a link between dual VET and lower wage inequality. Yet, recent contributions suggest that the technological and organizational changes associated with the rise of the knowledge economy undermine the beneficial effects of dual VET. Most notably, employment in routine-task-intensive occupations is declining due to automation, whereas technological change increases demand for non-routine cognitive tasks. For such high-end jobs, college-educated workers with general skills are argued to be better suited. This paper provides the first evidence on the effect of dual VET on wage inequality in mature knowledge economies. We have assembled a new panel data set for 37 advanced economies from 1996 to 2020. We find that dual VET remains associated with lower levels of wage inequality throughout the entire period. The rise of the knowledge economy is positively associated with wage inequality at low levels of dual VET. However, where the dual VET share is high, the rise of the knowledge economy further reduces wage inequality. Our paper significantly extends existing research on the effects of dual VET by explicitly theorizing and modelling its interaction with the knowledge economy. Contrary to the fears often espoused in the literature, we find no evidence that the knowledge economy undermines the beneficial effects of dual VET.

The Missing Link: Technological Change, Dual VET, and Social Policy Preferences
(joint with Patrick Emmenegger and Niccolo Durazzi)

Abstract

How does technological change affect social policy preferences? We advance the lively debate surrounding this question by focusing on the moderating role of education and training institutions. In particular, we develop a theoretical argument that foregrounds the role of dual VET systems. While existing literature would lead us to expect that dual VET systems increase demand for compensatory social policy and magnify the effect of automation risk on such demand, we contend that the opposite holds true. We hypothesize that dual VET systems weaken demand for compensatory social policy and dampen the effect of automation risk on demand for compensatory social policy through three non-mutually exclusive mechanisms that we refer to as (i) skill certification; (ii) material self-interest; and (iii) workplace socialization. Analyzing cross-national individual data from ESS, fine-grained data on individual educational background from the German ESS module as well as national-level OECD data on education and training systems, we find strong evidence in favor of our argument. The paper does not only advance the debate on social policy preferences in the age of automation but it also sheds new light on an old debate, namely the relationship between skill specificity and social policy preferences.

Work in Progress

The Structural Underpinnigs of the Decline of External Efficacy in the US
(joint with Mads Elkjaer)

Does Robotisation Increase Inequality between Manufacturing and Service Workers?

Abstract

Robotisation is reshaping the political economy of labour markets and is attracting substantial interest from social scientists. Recent studies have found sometimes contradictory effects on aggregate employment and wages. Yet, the distributional consequences of robotisation at the occupational level remain under-theorised and under-investigated. In this paper, I use data from a panel of OECD countries from 1993 – 2016 to study whether robotisation has affected the relative wages of routine manufacturing occupations, which have been most exposed to robotisation, compared to other groups. I argue that, while robots reduce aggregate labour demand in exposed occupations, they enhance the productivity and hence wages of the remaining workers. However, my empirical analyses suggest that productivity gains from automation are not widely shared with workers. Instead, employment protection legislation appears to matter most for the relative fortunes of routine manufacturing and non-manufacturing workers.

The Impact of Covid-19 on Occupational Tasks

Abstract

In this project, I investigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the organisation of work in Europe. Using newly available data from the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS), I zoom in on how occupational task content has changed, with a particular focus on the routine intensity and complexity of occupations.