This study investigates how actual and anticipated intergenerational wealth transfers – i.e., inter vivos gifts and inheritances – contribute to inequalities in the transition to homeownership by parental social class. Utilizing discrete-time survival analysis on data from the German Socioeconomic Panel Study (N = 13,018), we find that individuals whose parents were manual workers or service workers ...
This paper investigates the mental health consequences of spousal death and the role of survivor benefits in mitigating these effects. Using Dutch administrative data and a staggered difference-in-differences, we first document a significant increase in the consumption of benzodiazepines - a proxy for deteriorating mental health - following widowhood (up to +3 percentage points, or +30%, in the...
The Covid-19 pandemic caused a global economic crisis, leading governments to provide substantial State Aid to support firms. This paper examines the effectiveness of Covid-related financial support in Spain and Italy, focusing on its impact on firm recovery. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach combined with propensity score weighting, it compares outcomes of similar firms receiving aid ...
Martin Kittel, Research Associate in the Energy, Transportation, Environment Department, successfully defended his dissertation entitled “Five Essays in Energy System Analysis - Exploring the Dunkelflaute and Unintended Storage Cycling” on January 27, 2025. The scientific reviewers were Tom Brown, Claudia Kemfert, and Wolf-Peter Schill. Congratulations!
