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It is the aim of the planned project to investigate how inequalities in the provision and benefits of company provided further training are influenced by characteristics of the company context. By using the Linked-Employer-Employee data (LIAB) of the IAB and the Panel WeLL the project wants to analyze how differences in the company context affect participation rates in further training as well as training-related benefits in terms of income growth, employability, and upward labor market mobility. The focus is on low skilled workers, who lack a proper or adequate professional qualification. Leading is the question to what extent and under which conditions company provided training reduces existing inequalities by better integrating the group of low skilled workers in the labor market.

My research covers the economics of education, with a special focus on secondary school systems and their role in shaping students’ educational achievement, labour market outcomes and inequality therein. My research is of applied and empirical nature: I apply econometric techniques to survey and administrative data, aiming to uncover causal relations between variables, with the ultimate goal of informing public policy. In the first chapter of my dissertation, I estimate the effects of ability tracking, as practiced in Germany, on student achievement. The early separation of students into different schools is usually motivated by efficiency.

Despite increasing shares of women at all levels of qualification, statistics show that the share of female professors in mathematics has hardly changed in Germany over the last 25 years. Existing potentials of highly qualified female mathematicians for the subsequent academic qualification levels remains under-exploited up to now (leaky pipeline). Additionally, female mathematicians continue to be trapped by glass ceiling, which contributes to their persistent underrepresentation at the professorship level as well as in other higher-level leadership positions in academia.

Laura Menze’s dissertation explores the labour market entry of graduates of apprenticeship training in Germany. While their vocational certificates are formally considered to be of equal value, the labour market opportunities differ substantially within this group. In her dissertation, Laura Menze asks how structural characteristics of the training occupation impact such differences. The dissertation, thus, contributes to the literature on how individual employment trajectories are structured by occupational characteristics.

In a first step, the project analyses the impact of characteristics of training occupations on the labour market opportunities directly after graduating from apprenticeship training.