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The Nexus between Loan Portfolio Size and Volatility: Does Bank Capital Regulation Matter?

This paper analyzes the effects of bank capital regulation on the link between bank size and volatility. Using bank-level data for 27 advanced economies over the 2000–2014 period, we estimate a power law that relates the volume of a bank’s loan portfolio to the volatility of loan growth. Our analysis reveals, first, that more stringent capital regulation weakens the size-volatility nexus. Hence, in ...

Comparing the Educational Gradients in Three Cardiovascular Disease-Specific Health Measures

Less-educated persons have worse cardiovascular health. We compare the educational gradients in three disease-specific health measures (biomarkers, self-reported doctors’ diagnoses and cause-specific mortality) in order to compare their relevance in different stages of the disease process. We study 14,102 people aged 50–89 from the US Health Retirement Study (HRS) in the period 2006–17. We use six ...

Industrial Robots, Workers’ Safety, and Health

This study explores the relationship between the adoption of industrial robots and workplace injuries using data from the United States (US) and Germany. Our empirical analyses, based on establishment-level data for the US, suggest that a one standard deviation increase in robot exposure reduces work-related injuries by approximately 16%. These results are driven by manufacturing firms (–28%), while ...

Estimating the Impact of Financial Investments on Agricultural Futures Prices Using Changes in Volatility

This paper studies the impact of financial investments on agricultural futures prices, using structural vector autoregressions. We identify exogenous variation in net long positions of speculators through heteroskedasticity. We first show that demand shocks of both index investors and noncommercial traders lead to a statistically significant contemporaneous increase in futures prices. We then quantify ...

Depression, Neuroticism and 2D:4D Ratio: Evidence from a Large, Representative Sample

A body of literature reports higher rates of depression and neuroticism in female samples compared to male samples. Numerous studies have investigated the role of prenatal sex hormone exposure in this sex difference, using the ratio between the second and fourth digit of the hand (“2D:4D”) as a putative marker. However, the sample sizes of those studies were mostly small and results remained inconclusive. ...

Employment alongside Bachelor’s Studies in Germany: Implications for Education Outcomes, the School-to-Work Transition, and Equity

This study seeks to examine the implications of student employment for the studies, the entry into the labour market, and social inequalities in higher education. The main argument is that both the quantity and quality of work alongside studies can affect relevant academic and labour market outcomes. On the one hand, high amounts of work may prolong the studies and decrease academic achievement. Side-jobs ...

Staff and community news October 2020

Ulrike Ehrlich of the German Centre of Gerontology (DZA), Lara Minkus and Moritz Hess of SOCIUM, Bremen, received the Best Paper Award 2020 for young researchers from the German Society for Demography in April 2020. The paper, entitled “Einkommensrisiko Pflege? Der Zusammenhang von familiärer Pflege und Lohn” (“The care-wage penalty: the association between family care and ...

SOEPnewsletter 2020-10

Population Decline Creating Constant Pressure on Eastern German States and Municipalities on the Expenditure Side

As the German constitution aims for equal living conditions, a huge number of political measures to enhance the conditions in the new states were undertaken after unification (known as the “Aufbau Ost”). In the new states, expenditure per capita rose significantly over the average expenditure of the old states and their municipalities and huge budget deficits occurred. Beginning in the mid-1990s, expenditure ...

SOEP-LEE2: SOEP workplace survey enters second round

The SOEP Linked Employer-Employee (SOEP-LEE) survey was conducted for the first time in 2012 and is now entering its second round as SOEP-LEE2. In cooperation with the Institute for Employment and Labour Relations (IPA) at the Helmut Schmidt University / University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg and funded by the Center for Digitization and Technology Research of the German Armed Forces (DTEC.Bw), ...