I am an applied microeconomist, mainly interested in the intersection of social safety net programs with labor markets and their implications for inequalities. A key strand of my research investigates the design of retirement policies and their influence on firm responses, worker employment decisions, workplace interactions, and broader market outcomes. I also work on the effects of job loss on workers and intergenerational mobility, and gender.
I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the CERGE-EI and a part-time research associate at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). During my PhD years, I made research visits to the University of Chicago (invited by D. Black) and the IAB (M.Moritz). I also did a PhD internship at the Dutch National Bank.
CV: access here
E-mail: sona.badalyan@cerge-ei.cz ; sona.badalyan2@iab.de
Research
"Firm Responses to Raising Women's Retirement Age" [Job Market Paper, Latest working version]
Abstract: Coworkers’ careers are interdependent. This study examines the impact of a reform that increased the retirement age for women on the career opportunities of younger workers. Using administrative social security data from Germany, I find that the reform-induced extension of older women’s careers reduces promotion opportunities and external hiring chances for younger coworkers. These crowding-out effects emerge during the years when the first affected cohorts of women remain in the labor force between the pre-reform and post-reform pensionable ages, with no large evidence of adjustments beforehand. The crowd-out effects are particularly pronounced for middle-aged female coworkers and external hires. The stronger impact on women is primarily driven by industrial and occupational segregation by gender in Germany. At the same time, the larger effect on middle-aged workers arises from their greater substitutability with older workers due to their proximity on career ladders, compared to the younger workers. Finally, the overall effects on the retention of older women exhibit substantial heterogeneity by the availability of internal and external substitutes, underscoring the role of labor market frictions in shaping the broader consequences of retirement reforms.
Awards: 1st place: Young Economists Seminar (Croatian National Bank, 2024)
2nd place: Young Economist of the Year in the Czech Republic (Czech Economic Society, 2024)
Grants: GAUK project No. 333221 (Principal Investigator)
Presented at: EWMES; EALE; IZA Summer School; ESPE; Dutch National Bank; Young Economists Seminar (Croatian National Bank); SITES; AIEL; IAB DiskAB and REGIO Department Flash Talks; Student Workshop at Harris School of Public Policy at UChicago; BSE Summer School; Czech Economic Society Biennial Conference; Armenian Economic Association Annual Meeting; CERGE-EI Brown Bag, DPW, DW, Applied Microeconometrics Reading Group
Scheduled presentations: SOLE (World SOLE-EALE-AASLE conference); International Conference on Pension, Insurance and Savings; RFBerlin Workshop on the Economics of Aging; IZA/Leiden/OECD Workshop on Recent Advances in Labor Economics Using Linked Employer-Employee Data
"Coordinated Retirement with Firms: The Role of Worker Substitutability" [Latest version]
Abstract: Worker turnover can be costly for firms due to imperfect worker substitutability, yet its role in shaping older workers’ employment decisions remains underexplored. This paper examines the correlation of labor demand factors with workers’ reactions to an increase in the early retirement age. Using a regression discontinuity design corresponding to a shift in the early retirement age from 60 to 63 years old, I show that the reform led to coordinated retirement decisions with firms- older workers are more likely to remain employed at the ages 60-62 in occupations with fewer internal substitutes (by coworkers in the same occupation) and external substitutes (by potential hires from the commuting zones), and when possessing specific skills that are difficult to replace. Moreover, conditional on employment at 60-62, the workers whose retirement age increased are less likely to bargain for higher wages than those who had an option to retire at 60. The findings suggest that raising the retirement age helps workers internalize employers’ costs of finding a suitable replacement with fewer reimbursement requirements, highlighting the importance of worker substitutability in shaping retirement decisions.
Grants: GAUK project No. 333221 (Principal Investigator)
Presented at: EALE; AIEL; CERGE-EI Brown Bag Seminar, IAB DiskAB and REGIO Department Flash Talks
"Coworkers Delaying Retirement, Together" [Restricted working version, data coding is in progress]
Idea: Retirement is not solely an individual choice — it’s a social phenomenon. I study the extent to which workplace peers shape the retirement timing of women by leveraging detailed social security data to assign peer groups. I leverage exogenous variation in early retirement ages by cohorts in Germany by a reform that abolished the women's pathways to early retirement, resulting in at least a 3-year jump in retirement age across consecutive cohorts. The identifying variation stems from the exposure of coworkers to peer women born in a narrow window around the reform cohort cutoff.
Presented at: IAB REGIO Department Flesh Talk, CERGE-EI Applied Student lunch
“Households in Crisis: From Pink Slips to Career Shifts Across Generations” (with C. Biesenbeek & M. Mastrogiacomo) [Restricted working version, data coding is in progress]
Idea: While the individual-level costs of job displacement are well-documented, less is known about its spillover effects on family members. Leveraging firm closures as a source of exogenous variation in parental labor market shocks and rich Dutch registry data with family linkages, we provide novel insights into how job loss reverberates within households and examine the long-term career trajectories of children who experienced parental job displacement, shedding light on its intergenerational effects on income mobility and careers.
As part of my PhD internship at the Dutch National Bank
"Disclosure Discrimination: An Experiment Focusing on Communication in the Hiring Process" (with D.Korlyakova & R.Rehák) [CERGE-EI WP, Not in progress]
Abstract: We focus on communication among hiring team members and document the existence of discrimination in the disclosure of information about candidates. In particular, we conduct an online experiment with a nationally representative sample of Czech individuals who act as human resource assistants and hiring managers in our online labor market. The main novel feature of our experiment is the monitoring of information flow between human resource assistants and hiring managers. We exogenously manipulate candidates' names to explore the causal effects of their gender and nationality on information that assistants select for managers. Our findings reveal that assistants disclose more information about family and less information about work for female candidates relative to male candidates. An in-depth analysis of the disclosed information suggests that gender stereotypes play an important role in this disclosure discrimination. Furthermore, assistants disclose less information about foreigners overall. This effect appears to be driven by the less attention assistants are willing to devote to the CVs of foreigners, measured by the extra effort to learn more about the candidates.
Co-financed grants: GAUK project No. 333221 (Principle Investigator);
ERC under the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 101002898)
Presented at: EWMES; pregame in the team of John List at UChicago; YEM 2023*; CERGE-EI Applied Microeconometrics Reading Group
*presented by co-author