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Viral Shocks to the World Economy

We construct a global index of epidemic news based on text analysis of newspapers from 17 countries. We apply the index to study the economic consequences of epidemics on the world economy in structural vector autoregressions. Epidemic shocks exert significantly and persistently negative effects on output and prices that last for up to two years. There is no quick recovery and no overshooting. The ...

Working Life and Human Capital Investment: Causal Evidence from a Pension Reform

Associations of Socioeconomic Disparities with Buccal Dna-Methylation Measures of Biological Aging

Background: Individuals who are socioeconomically disadvantaged are at increased risk for aging-related diseases and perform less well on tests of cognitive function. The weathering hypothesis proposes that these disparities in physical and cognitive health arise from an acceleration of biological processes of aging. Theories of how life adversity is biologically embedded identify epigenetic alterations, ...

Earnings Trajectories After Divorce: The Legacies of the Earner Model During Marriage

Divorce marks the legal endpoint of a marital union. While divorce is increasingly seen as a ‘clean break’, the past marital history of the couple may nevertheless shape their present conditions. In particular, there may be a legacy of a highly gendered division of labour during marriage that may affect the ex-spouses’ earning trajectories beyond the date of divorce. Using register data from the German ...

Atypical Work, Financial Assets, and Asset Poverty in Germany

This study investigates how atypical employment (i.e., part-time, temporary work, mini-jobs) affects workers' ability to accumulate financial assets and exposes them to asset poverty in Germany. Asset poverty occurs when household financial resources (e.g., bank deposits and stock equity) are insufficient to live at the income poverty line for three months. Previously, studies on labour market processes ...

Causal Misperceptions of the Part-time Pay Gap

In this paper, we analyze if an increase in the working life leads to more human capital investment via on-the-job training. We obtain RDD-estimates from a sharp date-of-birth cut-off, generated by a pension reform that increased the Early Retirement Age (ERA) by three years for many women in Germany. In our preferred specification, we find that this reform causally increased on-the-job training by ...

Socioeconomic Differences in SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Vaccination in Germany: A Seroepidemiological Study After One Year of COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign

Objective: To evaluate the socioeconomic patterns of SARS-CoV-2 antigen contacts through infection, vaccination or both (“hybrid immunity”) after 1 year of vaccination campaign.Methods: Data were derived from the German seroepidemiological Corona Monitoring Nationwide study (RKI-SOEP-2; n = 10,448; November 2021–February 2022). Combining serological and self-report data, we estimated adjusted prevalence ...

Selection, Socialization, and Risk Preferences in the Finance Industry: Longitudinal Evidence for German Finance Professionals

The financial sector plays a crucial role in society. Consequently, prior research has examined the preferences of professionals working in finance. However, these studies have tended to be cross-sectional and have neglected the dynamic roles played by (self-)selection and socialization. This paper uses longitudinal data from Germany to examine how individuals’ financial risk preferences affect their ...

Uncertainties in Estimating Production Costs of Future Nuclear Technologies: A Model-based Analysis of Small Modular Reactors

Predicting future costs of technologies not yet developed is a complex exercise that includes many uncertain parameters and functional forms. In that context, small modular reactor (SMR) concepts that are in a rather early development stage claim to have cost advantages through learning effects, standardized design, modularization, co-siting economies, and other factors, such as better time-to-market ...

Accounting for Pension Wealth, the Missing Rich and Under-coverage: A Comprehensive Wealth Distribution for Germany

This study constructs a comprehensive wealth distribution for Germany to inform debate in Germany and internationally on the distribution of wealth including pension entitlements. We estimate the net present value of pension wealth in Germany in 2012 and 2017 using Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data. When including pension wealth, German households’ wealth-income ratio increases from 570% to 850% in ...