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Tropospheric Ozone and Skin Aging: Results from Two German Cohort Studies

During the last two decades, it has been well established that a short-term exposure to ozone (O3) elicits an oxidative stress response in human and mouse skin, which leads to aberrant transcriptional expression of genes consistent with increased skin aging. Whether a long-term exposure to ambient O3 is associated with any skin aging traits, has remained unclear. We addressed this question in two elderly ...

Germany: The German Drinking Water Sector

Labor Supply and Fiscal Effects of Partial Retirement - the Role of Entry Age and the Timing of Pension Benefits

In recent years policy-makers are incentivizing later retirement entry by enabling flexible transitions into retirement through partial retirement. However, empirical evidence shows that the labor supply and related fiscal effects of more flexibility in the pension system, through partial retirement, are ambiguous and strongly depend on the design of partial retirement regimes. Two margins are in particular ...

How Cohabitation, Marriage, Separation, and Divorce Influence BMI: A Prospective Panel Study

Objective: This study examines how changes in cohabitation or marital status affect Body Mass Index (BMI) over time in a large representative sample. Method: Participants were 20,950 individuals (50% female; 19 to 100 years), representative of the German population, who provided 81,926 observations over 16 years. Face-to-face interviews were used to obtain demographic data, including cohabitation and ...

Comprehensive, Whole-of-Government Strategies on Coal Transition in Major Coal Using Countries

In the project Coal Transitions leading research institutes in six major coal-using countries evaluate current policies and develop economicallyfeasible and socially just pathways to transition from thermal coal before 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement. Next to the Climate Policy department and the department of Energy, Transportation and Environment of the DIW Berlin (Germany), these are...

Was Marx Right? Income Inequality, Market Concentration and Voting in late 19th Century Germany

The  recent  debate  on  the  causes  and  consequences  of  income  inequality shows striking similarity to the debate in many parts of Europe before 1914. Today and back then the focus was on the role of capital share and market concentration as a cause for rising inequality.  In this study we analyze the drivers and consequences of...

Day Care Quality and Changes in the Home Learning Environment of Children

Children's development is fostered by both high quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings and high quality home learning environments. As we know little about the interrelations between these two environments, we examine whether the child's attendance in a high quality ECEC arrangement relates to the quality of her home learning environment. Using rich NICHD Study of Early Child Care ...

Flipping a Coin: Evidence from University Applications

We empirically investigate the possibility that a decision maker prefers to avoid making a decision and instead delegates it to an external device, e.g., a coin flip. A large data set from the centralized clearinghouse for university admissions in Germany shows a choice pattern of applicants that is consistent with coin flipping and that entails substantial consequences for the matching outcome. In ...

Competitive Escalation and Interventions

Competitive escalation occurs frequently in managerial environments, when decisions create sunk costs and decision makers compete under time pressure. In a series of experiments using a minimal dollar auction paradigm, we test interventions to prevent competitive escalation. Without any intervention, most people, including experienced managers, escalate and lose money by bidding more than the price ...

Mortality in Midlife for Subgroups in Germany

Case and Deaton (2015) document that, since 1998, midlife mortality rates are increasing for white non-Hispanics in the US. This trend is driven by deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related diseases, termed as deaths of despair, and by the subgroup of low-educated individuals. In contrast, average mortality for middle-aged men and women continued to decrease in several other high-income ...