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The Economic Consequences of Being Widowed by War: A Life-Cycle Perspective (with J. Stuhler)

Despite millions of war widows worldwide, little is known about the economic consequences of being widowed by war. We use life history data from West Germany to show that war widowhood increased women’s employment immediately after World War II but led to lower employment rates later in life. War widows, therefore, carried a double burden of employment and childcare while their children were young...

Assessing the Social and Environmental Impacts of Critical Mineral Supply Chains for the Energy Transition in Europe

Advanced technologies are inherently dependent on critical minerals and their related metals. The mining extraction of these critical minerals leads to significant social and environmental impacts that extend beyond the regions where those advanced technologies are ultimately used. This study explores the global socio-environmental challenges arising from the European Climate Law's aim for net-zero ...

Inheritance tax reform

The aim of this research project is to examine the revenue and distribution effects of inheritance tax reforms proposed.The tax privileges for business assets (including the exemption requirement test) and for rented apartments are to be abolished. In order to reduce liquidity impact the tax liability is to be deferred or annuitized with interest. Furthermore, personal allowances and the tax rate...

SOEP alumn Jule Adriaans awarded Peter A. Berger Prize by the German Sociological Association

Dr. Jule Adriaans was awarded the Peter A. Berger Prize 2024 for her dissertation on “Distributive Justice: Definition, Determinants, and Consequences of the Justice of Earnings.” After Adriaans, a SOEP doctoral candidate (2018-2022), completed her PhD at the University of Bielefeld, she accepted a postdoc position at its Faculty of Sociology. Her work focuses mainly on income inequality and justice, ...

Bad Luck or Bad Decisions? Macroeconomic Implications of Persistent Heterogeneity in Cognitive Skills and Overconfidence

Business cycle models often abstract from persistent household heterogeneity, despite its potentially significant implications for macroeconomic fluctuations and policy. We show empirically that the likelihood of being persistently financially constrained decreases with cognitive skills and increases with overconfidence thereon. Guided by this and other micro evidence, we add persistent heterogeneity ...

Exploring effects of life-like virtual interviewers on respondents’ answers in a smartphone survey

Inexpensive and time-efficient web surveys have increasingly replaced survey interviews, especially conducted in person. Even well-known social surveys, such as the European Social Survey, follow this trend. However, web surveys suffer from low response rates and frequently struggle to assure that the data are of high quality. New advances in communication technology and artificial intelligence...

Questioning Nuclear Scale-up Propositions: Availability and Economic Prospects of Light Water, Small Modular and Advanced Reactor Technologies

This paper addresses the pressing need for rapid decarbonization of energy systems by examining the role of nuclear power in future energy scenarios collected in the IPCC database. Despite their explorative character, energy scenarios can influence decision-makers or might be used to promote certain technology developments. They are increasingly subject to the integration into real-world settings and ...

Avoid, Shift or Improve Passenger Transport? Impacts on the Energy System

Agglomeration Economies: Different Effects on TFP in High-tech and Low-tech Industries

We study the impact of agglomeration effects on firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) for industry groups defined by technology intensity. This allows for non-uniform effects on firms depending on their technological level. We find that urban economies have the largest impact on firm productivity in high-technology industries, while they have no effectin low-technology industries. For firms in the ...

DIW Women Executives Barometer: Method Report and Codebook for the Waves 2015-2024