Department of Economics

Johannes Kepler University

Current Research Projects
Dr. René Böheim

Current Research


Some research projects in which I am currently involved. (See also this list of ideas for Masters' theses.)
  • Determinants of the gender wage gap in Austria:

    together with Christine Zulehner (WiFo, principal investigator), Justus Henke (Statistik Austria), Hedwig Lutz (WiFo) and Helmut Mahringer (WiFo). This project is funded by the Jubiläumsfonds of the Austrian National Bank (grant number 12975).

    We construct a new unique data set from existing survey and administrative data, namely data from the Austrian micro-census and from the Austrian social security records to analyse the effects of the employment history of individuals on the gender wage gap. We investigate the influence of actual job experience, maternity/paternity breaks and household composition on the gender wage gap, building on earlier work (Böheim, Hofer, and Zulehner, 2007).

  • Atypical employment:

    together with Ulrike Mühlberger and Andrea Weber (funded by the Jubiläumsfonds of the Austrian National Bank, grant number 11090). We explore the dynamics of flexible work arrangements and investigate whether or not flexible work may be a tool to integrate individuals into the labour market. Our main research questions are the following: Does flexible work enhance the chances of regular work in the medium-term? Do workers in flexible contracts suffer wage penalties after switching to regular employment?

    We look at labour market transitions and medium-term wage penalties of part-time and marginal workers as well temporary and agency workers, comparing four different European countries (Austria, Germany, Italy and the UK). In contrast to most research output in this area, we go beyond a short-term, cross-sectional analysis, providing a comparative and dynamic view of the consequences of flexible work for employees.

    More Details in German here.

  • Second Jobs:

    together with Mark Taylor from the Department of Economics, University of Warwick, UK. We test empirically the validity of each of these reasons for holding a second job. Using panel data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) we investigate labour supply decisions over the 1990s. By taking advantage of the panel nature of the data we are able to follow workers over time and examine entry and exit from second jobs, whether or not second jobs are a temporary phenomenon caused by first job insecurity, hours constraints or financial shocks.

    First results are available in this working paper.

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