Externe referierte Aufsätze

Hat die Mietpreisbremse Auswirkungen auf das Mietwohnungsangebot?

Im Januar 2026 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht entschieden, dass die Mietpreisbremse nicht gegen das Grundgesetz verstößt und somit auch verlängert werden durfte. Dabei beruft sich das Verfassungsgericht unter anderem auf fehlende Evidenz zu nachteiligen Wirkungen der Mietpreisbremse, insbesondere mit Blick auf das Wohnungsangebot. Der Beitrag zeigt jedoch, dass es zwar bislang in der deutschen Forschung ...

The DIW Women Executives Barometer (DIW Managerinnen Barometer): Data on the Gender Composition of Corporate Boards in Germany

This article describes the DIW Women Executives Barometer (“DIW Managerinnen Barometer”), an annually updated dataset on the gender composition of executive and supervisory boards in large German companies. The panel covers the 200 largest nonfinancial companies, all DAX-listed firms, the 100 largest banks and 60 largest insurance companies, and all companies with federal participation. It records ...

Revisiting Oil Supply News Shocks: Proxy vs. Non-Gaussian Structural Vector Autoregressions

We replicate a study by Känzig (American Economic Review, 111 (2021), 1092–1125), who employs structural vector autoregressive techniques to examine the impact of changes in oil supply expectations on the price of oil and other macroeconomic aggregates. Känzig identifies an oil supply news shock by constructing a proxy from OPEC announcements about their production plans. As an alternative approach, ...

Personality Traits of Entrepreneurs and the Size of Their Firms

Personality research in entrepreneurship often focuses on venture entry and survival, leaving personality traits associated with firm size underexamined. Using novel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel that include a sample of owner-managers running larger firms, we investigate the relationship between personality—measured by the Big Five traits and risk tolerance—and firm size captured by the ...

Intragenerational Mobility in Wealth in Germany, Norway, and Britain: Descriptive Evidence

We study intragenerational wealth rank mobility, investigating three dimensions: (i) wealth mobility over the life cycle, (ii) heterogeneity in mobility among subgroups and wealth components, and (iii) commonalities and differences across divergent country contexts. We use data from Germany (SOEP, N= 12,380 individuals), Norway (administrative register data, N=3,460,602), and Britain (BHPS, N=7,910; ...

The Mediating Role of School Absenteeism in the Socioeconomic Achievement Gap

Socioeconomic disparities in children's academic achievement are well established, but the underlying mechanisms are less well understood. We test the hypothesis that socioeconomic disparities in children’s achievement in early primary school are partially mediated via school absences. We used linked data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS, birth cohort 2000/01) and the National Pupil Database (NPD) ...

Investigating the Replicability of the Social and Behavioural Sciences

Pursuing replicability — independent evidence for previous claims — is important for creating generalizable knowledge1,2. Here we attempted replications of 274 claims of positive results from 164 quantitative papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 54 journals in the social and behavioural sciences. Replications were high powered on average to detect the original effect size (median of 99.6%), used original ...

Willingness to Participate in Respondent-Driven Sampling: Findings from the German Social Cohesion Panel

Respondent-driven sampling (RDS) has been shown to be a promising network sampling strategy. However, it has also been shown to fail in some applications. Basing an RDS procedure on an existing panel study may, therefore, contain the risk of failure and might even alienate non-compliant seeds. This study therefore investigates the hypothetical willingness of general population panel participants to ...

Justice, Inequality, and the Joy of Discovery: The Contributions of Guillermina Jasso to Social Justice Research

This essay—based on an interview with Guillermina Jasso, Silver Professor of Arts and Science and Professor of Sociology at New York University and recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Society for Justice Research—offers an in-depth reflection on her influential career in the social sciences. Spanning five decades of scholarship, Jasso’s work has shaped central debates ...

The Intergenerational Association between Migration and Early Childhood Development in Germany: A Comparative Cross-Sectional Study of Forced and Voluntary Migrant Families (2004–2021)

Background: Family migration shapes early childhood development (ECD), but the link between parental voluntary versus forced migration experiences and ECD remains underexplored. Germany, with its diverse migration streams, offers an opportunity to investigate this interrelation. Objective: This study examines the link between parental migration status and ECD of children aged 2–4 and investigates ...

SOEP-LEE2: Data Updates and New Research Opportunities

The Socio-Economic Panel Linked Employer–Employee Survey, Version 2 (SOEP-LEE2), provides linked information on employees, establishments, and self-employed individuals in Germany. An earlier Data Observer article (Matiaske, Wenzel, Torben Dall Schmidt, Christoph Halbmeier, M. Maas, D. Holtmann, C. Schröder, et al. 2024. “SOEP-LEE2: Linking Surveys on Employees to Employers in Germany.” Jahrbücher ...

From Cycles to Spirals: Rethinking Longitudinal Survey Design

Longitudinal surveys play a central role in social science research and policy advice but increasing demands for timely data pose substantial challenges for managing time, resources, and data quality across survey waves. While the Survey Life Cycle (SLC) provides a well established framework for organizing survey production, it is primarily geared toward single wave studies and offers limited guidance ...

Inequality of Opportunity in Wealth: Levels, Trends and Drivers in Germany

This paper studies inequality of opportunity (IOp) in individual net wealth in Germany from 2002 to 2019 using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Applying the ex-ante IOp framework, we quantify the share of wealth inequality attributable to immutable circumstances and benchmark it against IOp in gross labour earnings. Relative IOp in net wealth is high—slightly above one half of total wealth inequality—and ...

Fast-Tracks in Mathematics: Accelerated Learning, Self‐Selection or Teacher Bias?

This study examines high‐achieving students in Norwegian lower secondary schools who follow accelerated learning trajectories in mathematics, so‐called fast‐tracks. It asks whether and how fast‐tracks improve high‐achieving students' learning and performance. The analyses rely on high‐quality administrative register data from Norway covering all students who graduated from 2010 to 2017. The results ...

Sustainable Finance Taxonomies – Designed to Support the Transition to a Net-Zero Economy?

A growing number of sustainable finance taxonomies aim to redirect capital towards climate change mitigation. Yet achieving net zero requires not only financing green economic activities but also transitional economic activities – hence activities that currently lack viable low-carbon alternatives but are required for a low carbon economy. Using comparative policy analysis, this article seeks to understand ...

Social Origin, the Class Ceiling in Earnings, and Job Task Segregation: Evidence from Germany

Social class origin is closely linked to individuals' labor market outcomes. This study examines the class ceiling—the earnings disadvantage that those from lower-class origins experience within higher-class occupations. We propose that job task segregation, i.e., the non-random selection into different task profiles within granular occupations, contributes to the class ceiling. We study these dynamics ...

Mehr Fordern fördern? Einschätzungen von Jobcenter-Beschäftigten zu Kernelementen des Bürgergeldes

Während die öffentliche Diskussion über das Bürgergeld seit der Einführung kontrovers verlaufen ist, wurde die Perspektive der Jobcenter-Beschäftigten bislang vernachlässigt – obwohl sie als „street-level bureaucrats“ zentral für die Umsetzung der Reform sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund beleuchtet der Beitrag auf Basis von Daten einer bundesweiten standardisierten Online-Erhebung unter Jobcenter-Beschäftigten, ...

A Co-Creation Approach to Selecting and Adapting Adolescent Tobacco and Air-Pollution Interventions and Strategies for Implementation in Diverse Countries: Insights from FRESHAIR4life

Background : Evidence-based interventions to reduce adolescents’ exposure to tobacco and air pollution are rarely implemented in low- and middle-income countries, often because they lack contextual fit. The ‘FRESHAIR4Life’ project aimed to optimise implementation of contextually adapted, evidence-based interventions in Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Romania, and Uganda. Selecting appropriate interventions ...

Transformation des SOEP: Evidenzbasierte Politikberatung für Krisenzeiten

Politische Beratung braucht eine gute und schnell zugängliche Datengrundlage. Beides ist in Krisenzeiten besonders schwer zu bekommen. Was es daher braucht: leistungsfähige, dauerhaft betriebene Dateninfrastrukturen, die im Krisenfall schnell aktiviert und für wissenschaftliche Analysen nutzbar gemacht werden können. Auch die SOEP-Daten-infrastruktur soll besser werden. Ab 2028 beginnt eine Transformation ...

Author Correction: Long-duration Electricity Storage Needs for Coping with Dunkelflaute Events in Europe