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SOEPpapers 1118 / 2021
Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people’s emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large panel data set, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as significant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness checks indicate ...
2021| Armando N. Meier
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SOEPpapers 1117 / 2021
We present first evidence how individual risk preferences shape entrepreneurial investment among the very wealthy using novel survey data from the top of the wealth distribution, which have been added to the 2019 German Socio-economic Panel Study. The data include private wealth balance sheets, in particular the value of own private business assets, and a standard measure of risk tolerance. We find that ...
2021| Frank M. Fossen, Johannes König, Carsten Schröder
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SOEPpapers 1116 / 2021
Although there is strong support for renewable energy plants, they are often met with local resistance. We quantify the externalities of renewable energy plants using well-being data. We focus on the example of biogas, one of the most frequently deployed technologies besides wind and solar. To this end, we combine longitudinal household data with novel panel data on more than 13, 000 installations ...
2021| Christian Krekel, Julia Rechlitz, Johannes Rode, Alexander Zerrahn
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SOEPpapers 1115 / 2020
We study the causal effect of local labor market conditions and attitudes towards immigrants at the time of arrival on refugees’ multi-dimensional integration outcomes (economic, linguistic, navigational, political, psychological, and social). Using a unique dataset on refugees, we leverage a centralized allocation policy in Germany where refugees were exogenously assigned to live in specific counties. ...
2020| Cevat Giray Aksoy, Panu Poutvaara, Felicitas Schikora
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SOEPpapers 1114 / 2020
We have developed and implemented a new sampling strategy to better represent very wealthy individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our strategy is based on the empirical regularity that the very wealthy have at least part of their assets invested in businesses, and that businesses document shares of relevant shareholders in their books. Our results show that combined analysis of the ...
2020| Carsten Schröder, Charlotte Bartels, Konstantin Göbler, Markus M. Grabka, Johannes König, Rainer Siegers, Sabine Zinn
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SOEPpapers 1113 / 2020
We analyze workers’ risk preferences and training investments. Our conceptual framework differentiates between the investment risk and insurance mechanisms underpin-ning training decisions. Investment risk leads risk-averse workers to train less; they undertake more training if it insures them against future losses. We use the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to demonstrate that risk affinity is ...
2020| Marco Caliendo, Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, Cosima Obst, Arne Uhlendorff
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SOEPpapers 1112 / 2020
Commonly described as the “gender care gap”, there is a persistent gender difference in the division of domestic responsibilities in most developed countries. We provide novel evidence on the short- and long-run effects of an exogenous shock on paternal availability, through a job loss, on the allocation of domestic work within couples. We find that paternal child care and housework significantly increase ...
2020| Juliane Hennecke, Astrid Pape
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SOEPpapers 1111 / 2020
This paper explores the methodological issues to take into account when using SOEP as a database for calculating a measure of housing costs and housing affordability. For this purpose, we focus on the evolution of housing costs for households headed by elderly people between 1998 and 2018. Our review yields two clear conclusions: (1) that SOEP represents a valuable source of data for calculating household ...
2020| Alberto Lozano Alcántara, Laura Romeu Gordo
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SOEPpapers 1110 / 2020
From an economic perspective, marriage and long-term partnership can be seen as a risk-pooling device. This informal insurance contract is, however, not fully enforceable. Each partner is free to leave when his or her support is needed in case of an adverse life event. An adverse health shock is a prominent example for such events. Since relationship breakdown itself is an extremely stressful experience, ...
2020| Christian Bünnings, Lucas Hafner, Simon Reif, Harald Tauchmann
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SOEPpapers 1109 / 2020
Temporary employees rank lower than permanent employees on various measures of mental and physical health, including well-being. In parallel, much research has shown that the relationship between age and well-being traces an approximate U-shape, with a nadir in midlife. Temporary employment may well have different associations with well-being across the lifespan, likely harming people in midlife more ...
2020| Alan Piper
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SOEPpapers 1108 / 2020
We investigate how the economic consequences of the pandemic, and of the government-mandated measures to contain its spread, affected the self-employed relative to employed individuals in Germany and, secondly, to what extent the female self-employed were more strongly hit than their male counterparts. For our analysis, we use representative real-time survey data in which respondents were asked about ...
2020| Daniel Graeber, Alexander S. Kritikos, Johannes Seebauer
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SOEPpapers 1107 / 2020
This study explores the relationship between the adoption of industrial robots and workplace injuries using data from the United States (US) and Germany. Our empirical analyses, based on establishment-level data for the US, suggest that a one standard deviation increase in robot exposure reduces work-related injuries by approximately 16%. These results are driven by manufacturing firms (–28%), while ...
2020| Rania Gihleb, Osea Giuntella, Luca Stella, Tianyi Wang
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SOEPpapers 1106 / 2020
Since the labor market reforms around 2005, known as the Hartz reforms, Germany has experienced declining unemployment rates. However, little is known about the reforms’ effect on individual life satisfaction of unemployed workers. This study applies difference-in-difference estimations and finds a decrease in life satisfaction after the reforms that is more pronounced for male unemployed in west Germany. ...
2020| Max Deter
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SOEPpapers 1105 / 2020
Normative-based distributional comparisons across countries and over time usually build upon the assumption that individuals are selfish. However, there is a consolidated evidence that individuals also care about what others have. In this paper we propose a framework for comparing and ranking distributions that includes non-individualistic possibilities. Specifically, we consider ranking criteria that ...
2020| Flaviana Palmisano
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SOEPpapers 1104 / 2020
People differ in their willingness to take risks. Recent work found that revealed preference tasks (e.g., laboratory lotteries)—a dominant class of measures—are outperformed by survey-based stated preferences, which are more stable and predict real-world risk taking across different domains. How can stated preferences, often criticised as inconsequential “cheap talk,” be more valid and predictive than ...
2020| Ruben C. Arslan, Martin Brümmer, Thomas Dohmen, Johanna Drewelies, Ralph Hertwig, Gert G. Wagner
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SOEPpapers 1103 / 2020
Dieser Bericht beschreibt die Impfbereitschaft und Akzeptanz einer Impfpflicht gegen Covid-19 in Juni und Juli 2020 in Deutschland auf Basis einer Teilstichprobe (SOEP-CoV) des Sozio-ökonomischen Panels, die zum Themenkomplex Covid-19 befragt wurde. SOEP-CoV beinhaltete auch Fragen zur Impfbereitschaft und zur Akzeptanz einer Impfpflicht gegen Covid-19. Das wichtigste Ergebnis unserer Studie ist, dass ...
2020| Daniel Graeber, Christoph Schmidt-Petri, Carsten Schröder
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SOEPpapers 1102 / 2020
Following the fall of the Iron Curtain it was important for the acceptance of the new economic and political system that the former Communist elites did not maintain their privileges, and that protesters, who helped to overturn the old system, improved their situation. With newly available panel data on East Germany’s socialist past, the German Democratic Republic, we analyze how former Communist elites, ...
2020| Max Deter
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SOEPpapers 1101 / 2020
Cost-utility analysis compares the monetary cost of health interventions to the associated health consequences expressed using quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). At whichthreshold the ratio of both is still acceptable is a highly contested issue. Obtaining societal valuations of the monetary value of a QALY can help in setting such threshold values but it remains methodologically challenging. A recent ...
2020| Sebastian Himmler, Jannis Stöckel, Job van Exel, Werner Brouwer
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SOEPpapers 1100 / 2020
Personality predicts how we interact with others, what partners we have, and how happy and lasting our romantic relationships are. At the same time, our experiences in these relationships may affect our personality. Who experiences specific major relationship events and how do these events relate to personality development? We examined this issue based on data from a nationally representative household ...
2020| Eva Asselmann, Jule Specht
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SOEPpapers 1099 / 2020
We examine the differential effects of Covid-19 and related restrictions on individuals with dependent children in Germany. We specifically focus on the role of school and day care center closures, which may be regarded as a “disruptive exogenous shock” to family life. We make use of a novel representative survey of parental well-being collected in May and June 2020 in Germany, when schools and day ...
2020| Mathias Huebener, Sevrin Waights, C. Katharina Spiess, Nico A. Siegel, Gert G. Wagner