The IZA - Institute of Labor Economics (German: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit), until 2016 referred to as the Institute of the Study of Labor (IZA), is a private, independent economic research institute and academic network focused on the analysis of global labor markets and headquartered in Bonn, Germany.
This paper examines the impact of an experiment in North Macedonia in which vulnerable unemployed individuals applying to a subsidized employment program were randomly selected to attend job interviews. Employers hiring a new employee from the target population receive a subsidy covering the wage cost of the worker for the first six months. Using administrative employment data, we find that attending the job interview led to an increase of 15 percentage points in the likelihood of being employed 3.5 years after the start of the intervention. We also find positive and statistically significant effects on individuals' non-cognitive and work-related skills.
Toxic behaviors in multiplayer online gaming environments have become a growing concern, as aggression between players can diminish game enjoyment and reduce psychological well-being. This preregistered randomized controlled trial tested the effectiveness of a brief social-psychological intervention designed to reduce both involvement in and the psychological consequences of toxicity by exposing gamers to adaptive strategies against toxicity in the form of peer testimonials. A total of 722 gamers (93.6 % men; Mage = 31.40 years, SD = 8.13) were randomly assigned to either the treatment group (n = 372) or the control group (n = 350). The treatment group was exposed to materials focused on toxic behaviors, while the control group read about peer experiences related to disruptive external circumstances in the gaming environment. Maladaptive and adaptive reactions to toxicity, rumination, game enjoyment, and toxic disinhibition were assessed before the intervention and one month later. Compared to the control group, players in the treatment group reported lower levels of rumination and more adaptive responses to toxicity in anticipated situations of toxicity immediately after the intervention. Moreover, participants in the treatment group reported fewer maladaptive reactions to toxicity immediately after the intervention and also one month later compared to the control group. These findings indicate that social-psychological interventions targeting social norms can effectively foster adaptive and reduce maladaptive responses to toxic behavior, which were previously identified as major contributing factors to the social contagion of toxicity in gaming environments.
Children who start school at a younger age are more likely to receive pharmacological treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This pattern is widely attributed to peer-comparison biases, but the relative importance of different underlying mechanisms remains debated. We use administrative data from England to study how school starting age affects ADHD prescription rates from ages 5 to 15. Exploiting a sharp school-entry cutoff and comparing children born just before and after September 1, we estimate both age- and grade-specific effects of early school entry. We find that early starters are 40–50
We estimate the effect of parental separation on the risk and trust attitudes of German adolescents using a large household survey dataset, which allows us to match respondents to their siblings and parents. Our results indicate that adolescents from separated families are less trusting but have the same risk tolerance as adolescents from non-separated families, even after conditioning on the attitudes of parents and other controls. This trust deficit persists into early adulthood. Moreover, for both trust and risk, we find that separation attenuates the transmission of preferences from father to child. Additional analyses point to reduced parental involvement and greater family conflict as potential mechanisms.
U.S. fertility declined as expected during the Great Recession, but then continued to fall throughout the recovery period. This drop was more acute among young women and unmarried women, whose births are more likely to be unintended. We use a combined-survey estimation strategy to estimate birth intention consistently over time. We find that between 2007 and 2019 intended births fell by 8.5 percent, while unintended births fell by 22 percent. The decline in unintended births is primarily explained by changes in demographic characteristics of women of childbearing age, reductions in sexual activity, and shifts to more effective methods of contraception.
