Who makes it to the top? We use the leading, socio-economic survey in Germany supplemented by extensive data on the rich to answer this question. We identify the key predictors for belonging to the top 1 percent of income, wealth, and both distributions jointly. Although we consider many, only a few traits matter: Entrepreneurship and self-employment in conjunction with a sizable inheritance of company ...
2023| Johannes König, Christian Schluter, Carsten Schröder
While inequality of opportunity (IOp) in earnings is well studied, the literature on IOp in individual net wealth is scarce to non-existent. This is problematic because both theoretical and empirical evidence show that the position in the wealth and income distribution can significantly diverge. We measure ex-ante IOp in net wealth for Germany using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Ex-ante ...
2023| Daniel Graeber, Viola Hilbert, Johannes König
We present ï¬rst 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 ...
2021| Frank M. Fossen, Johannes König, Carsten Schröder
This study quantifies the distributional effects of the minimum wage introduced in Germany in 2015. Using detailed Socio-Economic Panel survey data, we assess changes in the hourly wages, working hours, and monthly wages of employees who were entitled to be paid the minimum wage. We employ a difference-in-differences analysis, exploiting regional variation in the “bite” of the minimum wage. At the ...
In:
Empirical Economics
66 (2024), S. 735–761
| Frank M. Fossen, Johannes König, Carsten Schröder
Very wealthy people influence political and societal processes by wielding their economic power through foundations, lobbying groups, media campaigns, as investors and employers. Because personality shapes goals, attitudes, and behaviour, it is important to understand the personality traits that characterize the rich. We used representative survey data to construct two large samples, one from the general ...
In:
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
9 (2022), 1, 12 S.
| Marius Leckelt, Johannes König, David Richter, Mitja D. Back, Carsten Schröder
Health shocks limit individuals’ participation in the labor market and pose a major risk to household welfare. In this paper, we derive two novel health shock indicators using machine learning based on sick days and hospitalizations: one for transitory and one for persistent shocks. In an event study framework, we show their respective effects on employment, yearly working hours, and labor earnings, ...
SSRN,
2022,
48 S.
(SSRN Papers)
| Mattis Beckmannhagen, Johannes König