Institut für Höhere Studien - Institute for Advanced Studies
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Faith and the Child Penalty: Religious Affiliation and Gendered Earnings Losses After Childbirth
Full text linkThe relationship between parenthood and gendered labor market outcomes has been extensively studied, with the ‘child penalty'—defined as the effect of having children on mothers' labor earnings relative to their partners'—documented in many countries. While prior research has explored institutional and normative drivers of this gap, the role of religious affiliation remains understudied, particularly at the population level. Religious beliefs shape both fertility decisions and labor market behavior and hence are potentially an important factor shaping heterogeneity in the size of the child penalty. Using comprehensive Austrian register data, this study provides novel evidence on the intersection of religious affiliation and the child penalty. Our results indicate that religious affiliation acts as a moderator of child penalties. Women with a religious affiliation, particularly those belonging to the Catholic majority, experience substantially larger earnings losses following childbirth compared to their secular peers. A decade after the birth of the first child, the woman’s share of the couple’s joint labor income declines by around 25 percentage points among couples where both partners are Catholic, compared to 18 percentage points among religiously unaffiliated couples. These findings underscore the importance of cultural factors in shaping the economic consequences of motherhood
Sommer-Prognose der österreichischen Wirtschaft 2025–2026. Beginnende Erholung trotz globaler Risiken
Full text linkParenting leave duration and mothers’ skills along the life course
No full textA prominent explanation for the motherhood wage penalty is human capital loss during career interruptions around childbirth. This study provides first direct evidence on this mechanism by examining whether longer parenting leave reduces mothers’ work-relevant skills. Using a newly constructed policy dataset covering 40 years of maternity and parental leave reforms across 19 European countries, we link variation in statutory leave duration to later-life numeracy skills – a strong predictor of earnings. We find that each additional year of statutory parenting leave reduces mothers’ numeracy scores by 3% to 5%. This decline is not driven by fertility responses to the policies. Instead, longer entitlements lengthen career breaks in the short run and lower employment in the long run. This suggests extended leave may decrease mothers’ labor market attachment and thus reduce opportunities to use and maintain work-relevant skills along the life course, consistent with the “use it or lose it” hypothesis. Results are driven by countries with long leave, pointing to nonlinearities: shorter leave does not harm skills, whereas extended leave leads to skill loss. Ultimately, longer entitlements are associated with only modest reductions in earnings, suggesting skills play – at most – a minor role in the motherhood penalty
AI Agents as Infrastructures: Mediating Power Dynamics in Global AI Platform Ecosystems between the US and China
No full textPrevious research has shown that the political economy of Generative AI (GenAI) is shaped by infrastructural dominance of US-based Big Tech companies—Google, Microsoft, Amazon—which control cloud computing, data access, proprietary software, and pools of AI talent. However, the emergence of task-oriented AI agents and the growing influence of Chinese tech firms potentially reshuffle this political economy. AI agent systems, such as GPT Builder (OpenAI), Copilot Studio (Microsoft), and Coze (ByteDance), integrate foundation models with complementary components to perform specific tasks in programmable, modular, and increasingly customized ways. As such, AI agents are not only reconfiguring the technical architectures of GenAI development pipelines, but are also operating as infrastructural middleware towards the platformization and customizable industrialization of GenAI.
These shifts call for a renewed examination of infrastructural mediation and control of GenAI platform ecosystems across both U.S. and Chinese contexts. Hence, this study aims to investigate how AI agents are mediating technical interdependencies and power asymmetries within the global political economy of GenAI by asking: What are the technical architectures of AI agent systems in the U.S. and China? How do these systems operate differently as infrastructural components within broader AI ecosystems? And how do they reflect or reshape the shifting political-economic relations?
To address these questions, this study will conduct a comparative case study of two leading AI agent builders—GPT Builder from the U.S. and Coze from China. Employing a “technographic” approach, it will critically scrutinize publicly available materials including products pages, blog posts, press releases and relevant media and industry reports. The analysis will first map distinct orchestrations of core components such as foundation models, tools, memory systems, knowledge base and prompting on each builder. Based on this computational overview, this study will then situate these building systems within their respective platform architectures and AI technology stacks in each country to unfold the underlying infrastructural relations and power structures.
By examining the institutional distinctions between two cases, this study will offer empirical insight into how OpenAI and ByteDance are institutionalizing distinct modes of infrastructural dominance and interdependence. It argues that the political economy of GenAI is being reconfigured through an increasingly contested geopolitical terrain, where AI agents function as a new infrastructural layer enabling ecosystem-based digital dependency and rentier economy. These new dynamics extend infrastructural control beyond the lock-ins in cloud infrastructures of US-based tech companies, signalling a shift toward customized industrialization and governance over downstream ecosystems. In doing so, this research will lay a foundation for further critical inquiry, policy regulation and public engagement on AI governance and platform power
Wellbeing cost of carbon
Full text linkNon-Technical Summary
Human wellbeing is the guiding goal of many public policies, yet its complexity often prevents present measurement and future projections of it. Here, using a global model and a wellbeing measure called Years of Good Life (YoGL) , we show how climate change, economy, and social conditions together shape people's long-term wellbeing. We also introduce the ‘wellbeing cost of carbon' metric, which is similar to the social cost of carbon but measures the wellbeing loss due to carbon emissions instead of only economic loss. The results highlight that younger generations pay the highest price unless strong climate action is taken.
Technical Summary
Human wellbeing is the ultimate end of sustainable development alongside planetary wellbeing. It relies on complex interactions between natural and social systems, including those between climate change, economic growth, and human mortality. Despite extensive analyses of individual climate impacts, their combined effects on long-term wellbeing are sparsely examined. Using a dynamic systems model of global climate, economy, environment, and society relationships and employing YoGL as an empirical wellbeing indicator, we present wellbeing projections in diverse socioeconomic and climate scenarios, and calculate the loss of human wellbeing due to carbon emissions. In a climate-optimistic scenario, 20-year-old females and males gain 10.4 and 7.5 YoGL, respectively, on average by 2100, while a pessimistic scenario reduces it by 8.5 and 11.3 years. Physical health remains the most restraining driver of long-term human wellbeing, while indirect climate impacts on education and poverty also reduce it by a similar extent in a climate-pessimistic scenario. The younger generations bear a much higher wellbeing cost of carbon unless strong climate action is taken. This study offers a new quantitative, empirically grounded and integrated perspective on climate impacts on human wellbeing, expanding beyond economic damages and the social cost of carbon.
Social Media Summary
Climate choices today shape our future wellbeing: Strong action boosts ‘good life’ years, inaction takes it away
Früh erkannt, besser behandelt? Krebsvorsorge und -früherkennung in Österreich
No full textKrebsscreening ist ein zentrales Instrument zur Senkung der Krebsmortalität. In Österreich bestehen das Screening für Brustkrebs sowie Möglichkeiten zur Gebärmutterhals-, Prostata- und Darmkrebsvorsorge bzw. -früherkennung. Der Fokus liegt auf einem günstigen Nutzen-Schaden-Verhältnis, welches durch Risikostratifizierung weiter verbessert werden kann
Festlegung ärztlicher Tarife im internationalen Vergleich
Full text linkDiese Ausgabe des HSW bietet einen Überblick zur Tariffestlegung für Leistungen niedergelassener Vertragsärztinnen und Vertragsärzte in fünf Vergleichsländern (Deutschland, Schweiz, Frankreich, Niederlande und Dänemark), um Erkenntnisse für einen einheitlichen österreichischen Honorarkatalog zu gewinnen
