Resumen de Essays in applied microeconomics
This thesis consists of three self-contained chapters that empirically evaluate the influence of capital costs and occupational regulation on labor demand. In the first chapter, I study the effects of investment tax credits on firms’ input choices in Germany. I find evidence that such a policy has a strong positive direct effect on firm investment and employment, and that positive spillovers between firms lead to sizable further adjustments. In the second chapter, I estimate the firm-level capital-labor elasticity of substitution. I set up a model of firm production with size-dependent capital costs and estimate the model for a German tax policy targeted towards manufacturing firms. The estimated elasticity implies important complementarities between capital and labor in firm production. In the third chapter, I analyze how the formal recognition of immigrants’ foreign occupational qualifications affects their subsequent labor market outcomes using novel German data. The results show that access to regulated occupations after recognition is an important driver for faster assimilation of immigrants’ earnings.
