The extension of publicly provided or subsidized child care is currently one of the priorities of the political agenda in many European countries. In this article, the excess demand for subsidized child care slots in Germany is estimated using a partial observability model. The results show that there is considerable excess demand for child care for children aged less than 3 years in East and West ...
The accumulation of the human capital stock plays a key role to explain the macroeconomic performance across regions. However, despite the strong theoretical support for this claim, empirical evidence has been not very convincing, probably because of the low quality of the data. This paper provides a robustness analysis of alternative measures of human capital available at the level of EU NUTS1 and ...
It is becoming more and more important to be highly skilled in order to integrate successfully into the labor market. Highly skilled workers receive higher wages and face a lower risk of becoming unemployed, compared to poorly qualified workers. We analyze the determinants of successful high school graduation in Germany. As our main database, we use the youth file of GSOEP for the period extending ...
I analyze the impact of food price inflation on parental decisions to send their children to school. Moreover, I use the fact that food crop farmers and cotton farmers were exposed differently to that shock to estimate the income elasticity of school enrolment. The results suggest that the shock-induced loss in purchasing power had an immediate effect on enrolment rates. Instrumental variable estimates ...
We extend the literature on transition economies' wage structures by investigating the returns to tenure and experience. This study applies recent panel data and estimation approaches that control for hitherto neglected biases. We compare the life cycle structure in East and West German wages for fulltime employed men in the private sector. The patterns in the returns to seniority are similar for the ...