Work in Progress:

„Aggregate Lending Standards and Inequality,“ with Hannah Seidl. Draft available upon request.

Abstract: We study the effects of movements in aggregate lending standards on macroeconomic aggregates and inequality. We show in a New Keynesian model with hetero-
geneous households and housing that a looser loan-to-value (LTV) ratio stimulates housing demand, nondurable consumption, and output. Our model implies that the LTV shock transmits to macroeconomic aggregates through higher household liquidity and a general-equilibrium increase in house prices and labor income. We also show that a looser LTV ratio redistributes housing wealth from the top 10% of the housing wealth distribution to the bottom 50%, indicating an overall decrease of inequality.

„Inequality, Home Production, and Monetary Policy.“ Draft available upon request.

Abstract: I study the role of home production in determining the income channel of monetary policy. To this end, I develop a Two Agent New Keynesian model with home production and sticky wages. The model matches German data on time use and income of HtM households and savers. In my model, in response to a contractionary monetary policy shock, HtM households increase non-market work more than savers do. The resulting consumption inequality is smaller. The income channel of monetary policy may therefore be smaller when taking into account that households can also produce consumption goods at home.

„Balancing Work and Life: Working from Home, Wages, and Part-time Work in the UK,“ with Alberto Polo and May Rostom.

Abstract: We use UK microdata to estimate the effect of working-from-home (WFH) on UK wages. Leveraging differences in exposure to remote work across occupations around the Covid-19 pandemic, we find that a 1 percentage point increase in remote work increased real weekly wages by 8 basis points between 2019 and 2022. This translates into a gap in real wage growth that is 3 percentage points larger for occupations in the top quintile by share of WFH, relative to the bottom. It can account for around half of the 2.7% increase in mean real wages over this period. More than 50% of the impact of remote work on wages is due to hours worked, and in particular to a decrease in part-time work, with the remaining share due to firm-level factors.

Publications:

„Missing Growth Measurement in Germany,“ with Sven Schreiber, German Economic Review, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 493-527, 2022.

Abstract: Using detailed establishment-level micro data, this paper analyzes for the German case the hypothesis by Aghion et al. (2019), stating that officially published figures for real output growth would be systematically understated. The effect rests on overstated inflation estimates due to imputed prices for disappearing goods and services varieties, where measurable plant entry and exit dynamics play a crucial rule. Our main results regarding understated real output growth lie in the range of 0.39 to 0.54 average annual percentage points for 1998–2016, which is quite closely in line with existing findings for France, the USA, and Japan (in different periods). We also find that services sectors appear most affected, and that the effect in East Germany is somewhat larger. We investigate different market share proxies, provide additional robustness analysis and also discuss limitations of the approach.