FELIX KOENIG
Research
Working Papers
We present a new method to identify the value of workplace amenities using excess mass in the earnings distribution around budget discontinuities. The approach formalizes the intuition that workers are less responsive to financial incentives when the returns to work depend more strongly on the value of amenities. Applying the approach to the value of workplace safety, we find that workers are willing to forgo 9% of their earnings to reduce fatality risks by 1 in 100,000. We also illustrate how the approach can identify aggregate bundles of amenities linked to a job and measure the value of "enjoyable jobs."
Work in Progress
Regulating Paid Time Off (joint with Simon Quach)
Paid time off is among the most common and most valued employment amenities. This study analyses the labor market effects of mandating paid time off. We leverage a German court ruling that mandated more time off for specific age groups in some industries. We find that the ruling significantly increased paid time off, with limited adverse effects on employment or wages. At the same time, fewer workers exit jobs with more paid time off, suggesting that the utility value of these jobs increases. The results suggest that information frictions lead to under-provision of paid time off in the labor market and that government paid time off mandates can improve welfare.
Wage Surging: An Analysis of Labor Shortages and Firm Search (joint with Zoë Cullen and Mitchell Hoffman)
Employers report labor shortages even among low skill jobs. Why don't wages adjust dynamically to clear market demand? We find high demand for wage-surging to fill vacancies and characterize why demand is higher than its implementation. We exploit quasi-random variation in wages for job postings on a large staffing platform and show that a 10% increase in wages would increase the fill rate by more than 30% for a wide range of employers. Despite this, many firms do not raise wages even when vacancies remain unfilled. A firm-side RCT shows that firms have a strong underlying demand for surge wages, yet optimization and adjustment costs suppress use. When the Platform reduces these frictions, adoption rises 14 fold and a majority of firms opts to introduce surge wages. Our results suggest unfilled vacancies could fall by 20% with surge wages by marketplace intermediaries.
Publications
Labor Supply and Innovation in Entertainment: Evidence from TV (joint with George Fenton)
Reservation Wages and the Wage Flexibility Puzzle (joint with Alan Manning and Barbara Petrongolo)
Immigration and the Top 1% (joint with Arun Advani, Lorenzo Pessina, Andrew Summers)
American Economic Review: Insights (2023) replication files; media coverage: AEA blog, USAPP blog, CentrePiece, Qrius, LSE Business Review, Econimate video
Can Helping the Sick Hurt the Able? Incentives, Information and Disruption in a Welfare Reform (joint with Nitika Bagaria, Barbara Petrongolo, John van Reenen)