Publikationsliste KOPS

Much research has focused on penalties by gender, parenthood and part-time work for hiring processes or wages, but their role for promotions is less clear. This study analyses perceived chances for internal promotion, using a factorial survey design. Employees in 540 larger German (>100 employees) firms were asked to rate the likelihood of internal promotion for vignettes describing fictitious co-workers who varied in terms of gender, parenthood, working hours as well as age, earnings, qualification, tenure and job performance. Results show that promotion chances are perceived as significantly lower for co-workers who are women (gender penalty), mothers (motherhood penalty) and part-time workers (part-time penalty). Fathers and childless men (co-workers) are not evaluated differently (no fatherhood premium or penalty), and neither does part-time employment seem to be perceived as a double penalty for male co-workers. All three perceived promotion penalties are more pronounced among female employees, mothers, and part-time employees. These findings show that employees perceive differential promotion chances for co-workers which indicate actual differences due to discrimination, selective applications or structural dead-ends. Either way, perceived promotion penalties are likely consequential in guiding employee’s application behavior and hence can contribute to the persistence of vertical gender segregation in the labor market.

Stringent policies that significantly increase the cost of greenhouse gas emissions, such as CO₂, are increasingly necessary for mitigating climate change. Yet while richer individuals in society generate the most CO₂ emissions and thus will face the largest absolute cost burden, they also tend to be more supportive of stringent environmental policies. In this paper, we examine how information about the distribution of carbon emissions by income affects support for carbon taxation. While carbon taxation is widely advocated as the most efficient policy for mitigating climate change, it faces significant political hurdles due to its distributional costs. Using original survey data, with an embedded experiment, we find that providing information about the actual distribution of household CO₂ emissions by income significantly changes individuals' support for carbon taxation. These effects are particularly pronounced at the bottom of the household income distribution, leading to increased support for costly climate policies. However, individuals who believe that carbon taxes will reduce their income continue to hold their level of support for carbon taxation. Our findings have significant implications for understanding the public's response to the distributional consequences of the green transitions and ultimately their political feasibility.

Many workers are experiencing the downsides of being exposed to an overload of information and communication technology (ICT), highlighting the need for resources to cope with the resulting technostress. This article offers a novel cross-level perspective on technostress by examining how the context of the welfare state influences the relationship between income and technostress. Showing that individuals with higher income experience less technostress, this study argues that the welfare state represents an additional coping resource, in particular in the form of unemployment benefits. Since unemployment benefits insure income earners in the case of job loss, the negative effect of income on technostress should increase with higher levels of unemployment generosity. In line with these expectations, empirical results based on original survey data collected in collaboration with the OECD show that the impact of income on technostress varies across welfare state contexts. Implications for public health and policymakers are being discussed.