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The IAB Special Lecture Series 2023 / 2024 / 2025

hosted by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in collaboration with the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU)


CONTENT

The IAB Special Lecture Series invites outstanding international researchers across the Social Sciences to present their current work. Guest lecturers are selected on exellent academic merit and typically have made significant contributions to their respective fields and continue to actively shape internationale research agendas. The IAB Special Lecture Series aims to provide a unique opportunity to the IAB researchers as well as researchers from other research entities to discurss the work and share their expertise with the speaker during the presentation, and to receive feedback on their own research projects during individual talks with the speaker.


CONFERENCE FORMAT

The IAB Special Lecture Series will be held at the IAB, Regensburger Str. 100, 90478 Nuremberg.


ABSTRACTS OF THE SPECIAL LECTURE SERIES 2024


» 16 September 2025 - Ulrike Malmendier

Prosociality and Layoffs

Many managers describe layoffs as the hardest and most painful decisions of their careers; yet, standard economic models treat human and physical capital adjustments alike. We collect novel data on layoffs by U.S. public firms using NLP techniques, which allows us to establish several facts that are jointly hard to reconcile with existing models. First, firing decisions have large adverse healthof effects on CEOs, with distress-induced layoffs estimated to reduce CEO lifespan by 1.85 years. Second, CEOs become more reluctant to make layoffs over their tenure as they form more connections inside the firm. After plausibly-exogenous CEO changes, instead, new CEOs make more and shareholder value-increasing layoff decisions. Third, CEOs’ increasing reluctance to lay off employees intensifies when layoffs are more painful for employees, such as during recessions or the holiday season, or more painful for managers to witness, such as when they affect socially or geographically close employees. Fourth, the documented layoff reluctance is substantially more pronounced among CEOs with higher empathy-related traits. We also show that long-tenured CEOs are more likely to cut R&D spending during recessions, offsetting forgonesavings from layoffs. Our results imply the need to adjust models of managerial decision-making for a “human” component of layoff avoidance. Prosocial, or empathy-related, motives provide a unifying explanation.

 Photo credit: © Sachverständigenrat Wirtschaft – Official website



» 04 December 2025 - Sarah Halpern-Meekin

Labor force participation among prime-age men in the United States: Considerations of dignity and health

Prime-age men's labor force participation has been declining in the United States for over 50 years, especially among men with lower levels of education and those in rural locations. Using data from interviews with 61 prime-age men in rural areas of the state of Wisconsin who were out of the formal labor force, this talk will describe the role of health issues in their labor force disconnection, especially in creating patterns of churning in and out of the formal labor force. In addition, the talk will explain the men's views of formal employment and the role of (in)dignity they have experienced on the job in shaping these views.


LOCAL ORGANIZERS

  • Yuliya Kosyakova
  • Martin Friedrich
  • Tim Kovalenko
  • Adrian Lerche
  • Theresa Koch
  • Jonathan Latner


PREVIOUS SPEAKERS AT THE SPECIAL LECTURE SERIES


FURTHER INFORMATION:

For any questions refer to IAB.Special-Lecture@iab.de


Registration »