In this study, we examine the relationship between personality traits, captured by risk tolerance and the Big Five traits, and firm size, as measured by the number of employees. We show that the personality of entrepreneurs matters for the size of their firm they operate. We use a novel add-on to the German Socio-Economic Panel that includes a sub-sample of owner-managers running larger firms. High ...
We are pleased to inform you that representatives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will visit the DIW Berlin to present the IMF Economist Program (EP) — an entry program for young economists who wish to pursue an international career in economic policy and research. The IMF Economist Program is designed for talented economists who are close to completing or have recently completed a PhD...
Divorce reshapes family life, yet little is known about one of its most consequential features: the allocation of child custody. We study the impact of joint versus sole custody on both parents and children using rich administrative data from Sweden linked to over 25 years of newly-collected court custody rulings. To address selection concerns, we exploit random assignment of custody disputes to judges ...
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 ...
This paper explores the effect of COVID-19 infection rates on individuals’ risk preferences using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), a large population-wide ran¬dom sample. Exploiting county-level variation in a difference-in-differences design, we find that risk preferences remain unchanged: the effect is precisely estimated at 2.1% of a standard deviation (95% CI: [−0.4%, +4.6%]), ruling out economically ...
A country’s fiscal policy plays a central role in stabilizing its economy. Its effectiveness depends on the choice of measures and how monetary policy responds. This report compares four fiscal policy measures for a typical euro area country: increase in public investment and government consumption, reductions in consumption taxes and income taxes. Both the theoretical model and the empirical results ...
