I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bonn. I obtained my PhD in Economics in Spring 2026.
Research interests: labor, public, and personnel economics. I am mainly working on the intersection of labor markets with social insurance programs.
CV: here
E-mail: sona.badalyan@uni-bonn.de
[My PhD dissertation focuses on internal labor markets, specifically examining how firm organization, labor market institutions, frictions, and social norms shape the outcomes of workers and firms in an aging economy.]
Media highlights: listen to me on Talking Economics Podcast (Spotify; Apple Podcasts: YouTube); read on CERGE-EI Blog or Charles University online magazine
Crowded Career Ladders? Intra-firm Spillovers of Raised Retirement Age (PhD Job Market Paper)
Abstract: I study how delayed retirements reshape firms' internal labor markets, leveraging a German reform that raised women's early retirement age by at least three years. The reform increased retention of older women and reduced both internal promotions and external hiring of younger coworkers, with the greatest losses among middle-aged workers who were near to older workers on the career ladder. Spillovers are structured: promotion crowd-outs arise in thick internal labor markets with intense competition, while hiring declines are largest in thin external markets with high turnover costs. Crowd-out effects concentrate within jobcells, whereas coworkers in different jobcells can benefit when retained older workers possess specific human capital. Taken together, the evidence supports slot-constraint theories-augmented by firm-specific human-capital mechanisms.
CERGE-EI WP No. 810 [November 2025, final PhD JMP version];
IAB-DP 01|2026 [January 2026, same in content as CERGE-EI WP]
Awards: Young Economist of the Year in the Czech Republic (Czech Economic Society, 2024), 2nd place
(for preliminary JMP version from November 2024)
Young Economists Seminar (Croatian National Bank, 2024), 1st place
(for the June 2024 version that also included parts of the paper "Retirement Age Reforms and Worker Substitutability: Implications for Employment of Older Workers.")
Media highlight: Roklen 24 prize highlights (in Czech); IAB (In German); Talking Economics Podcast (08:07-15:30); CERGE-EI Blog; Charles University online magazine
Presentations: BeNA Labor Economics Workshop (scheduled); CRC Retreat; University of Bonn, IHS, NHH (all 2026), WZB Workshop on the Economics of Ageing and Pensions, RFBerlin Workshop on the Economics of Aging, IAB NU-DE Workshop on Applied Microeconomics, EEA Congress, International Conference on Pension, Insurance and Savings, IZA/Leiden/OECD Workshop on Recent Advances in Labor Economics Using Linked Employer-Employee Data, HUN REN, and ifo Institute (all 2025); EALE (2024, 2023); EWMES, IAB-DiskAB, ESPE, IZA Summer School, Dutch National Bank, and Young Economists Seminar by Dubrovnik Economic Conference (all 2024); SITES and the U Chicago Student Workshop (all 2023); AIEL (2023, 2022); CERGE-EI Brown Bag (2023); BSE Summer School, Czech Economic Society, Armenian Economic Association, CERGE-EI Microeconometrics Reading Group, DW (all 2022), and DPW (2020).
Retirement Age Reforms and Worker Substitutability: Implications for Employment of Older Workers
Abstract: Do job-specific skills and worker substitutability shape how firms retain older workers when the retirement age increases? Using a regression discontinuity design, I exploit a 1999 German reform that eliminated the option for women to claim pensions early, at the age of 60. Before the reform, older workers could retire voluntarily, which imposed turnover costs on firms. After the reform, firms are better able to retain less substitutable workers for whom replacement is more costly. I find that substitutability by other workers matters more than substitutability through automation. At the same time, loss of early pension eligibility reduces workers’ outside options, allowing firms to offer lower wages. These findings show that organizational responses to workforce aging depend on worker substitutability, as firms retain harder-to-replace workers, reducing turnover costs while gaining wage-setting power.
CERGE-EI WP No. 794 [May 2025];
IAB-DP 14|2025 [October 2025]
Media highlight: CERGE-EI Economic Insights (Summer 2025); IAB; Talking Economics Podcast (15:30-17:50); CERGE-EI Blog; Charles University online magazine
Presentations: CERGE-EI Applied Brown Bag; Organizational Perspectives on an Aging Workforce (all 2026); HUN REN; ifo Institute (all 2025); EWMES 2024; EALE 2024 & 2023; IAB Brown Bag and Regio Flash Talks 2024; ESPE 2024; IZA Summer School 2024; Dutch National Bank 2024; Young Economists Seminar (Croatian National Bank) 2024; SITES 2023; AIEL 2023 & 2022; Student Workshop at Harris School of Public Policy at UChicago 2023; BSE Summer School 2022; Czech Economic Society Biennial Conference 2022; Armenian Economic Association Annual Meeting 2022; CERGE-EI Brown Bag 2023, Applied Microeconometrics Reading Group 2022, DW 2022 & DPW 2020 Seminars.
Peer Effects in Old-Age Employment Among Women
Abstract: This paper exploits a unique norm-shifting setting—a German pension reform that equalized retirement ages across genders—to examine how old-age employment propagates through workplace networks. The reform raised women’s earliest claiming age from 60 to 63 for cohorts born in 1952 onward. Using the universe of workgroups (workers sharing detailed occupations within establishments) from social security records, I compare women whose peers were just above or below the reform cutoff. I find that women are more likely to remain employed at older ages when their peers do, with stronger effects in West Germany, where traditional gender norms were stronger. Gender-neutral pension reforms thus amplify their impact through peer influence, fostering regional convergence in late-career employment patterns. Peer effects are mostly based on the social-norm and conformity channels. I also find limited evidence for the presence of the information channel and, novel in the literature, the work complementarity channel, where workers enjoy working together due to their productive complementarities.
CERGE-EI WP No. 800 [August 2025];
IAB-DP 13|2025 [October 2025]
Media highlight: IAB (in German); Talking Economics Podcast (17:50-end); CERGE-EI Blog
Presentations: Armenian Economic Association Conference, Paris School of Economics Labor Workshop (scheduled), IAB Brown Bag and Regio Flash Talks 2025; CERGE-EI Brown Bag 2025, Applied Student Research Lunch 2024, DW 2022, and DPW 2020.
[In this strand of my research, I examine whether and how constraints related to family structure, or labor market institutions, shape the job search behavior of workers who lost a job, and the impact of the job loss on the members of the households and income inequality.]
A Household Perspective on Job Loss and Intergenerational Mobility (with M. Mastrogiacomo)
[slides with preliminary results are available upon request]
Presentations: CERGE-EI Brown Bag (2026)
[Another strand of my research examines the sources of hiring differences by worker characteristics, especially the role of organizational hierarchies and internal information flows.]
Disclosure Discrimination: An Experiment Focusing on Communication in the Hiring Process (with D.Korlyakova & R.Rehák)
Abstract: We study "disclosure discrimination"-systematic group differences in what applicant information is communicated within hiring teams. In an online experiment with a representative Czech sample, HR assistants selected which details from workers’ profiles to share with managers under randomized candidate names. Assistants disclosed less information about foreigners, reflecting lower attention to their CVs, and emphasized women’s marital status and children more often, consistent with broader gender stereotypes. The results highlight internal communication as a distinct margin through which group differences may arise in hiring processes.
CERGE-EI WP No. 743 [first version: February 2023; revised: November 2025]
Presentations: EWMES 2024; Pregame in John List's team, YEM in Brno*, MPI for Research on Collective Goods* (all 2023); CERGE-EI Applied Microeconometrics reading group, DW (all 2022).
*Presented by co-author
