Search

Navigating Uncertainty: Do Communicable Diseases Influence Risk Preferences?

This paper explores the effect of COVID-19 infection rates on individuals’ risk preferences using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Findings show that the spread of COVID-19 does not significantly alter risk preferences. While we do find that individuals with prior cardiovascular diseases reduce their preference for risk-taking, this zero effect is remarkably stable across subgroups of the population. ...

Is Russian Gas Still Needed in the European Union? Model-Based Analysis of Long-Term Scenarios

Aligned with the war in Ukraine, Russia has significantly withheld natural gas exports to Europe since 2021. As there are no EU-wide sanctions on imports of Russian natural gas, the Ukraine transit as well as imports via Turkey and LNG have remained active during 2022–24. However, the Russian-Ukrainian transit agreement expires at the end of 2024 and discussions about new sanctions on natural gas as ...

Breaking the Silence: The Role of Women's Shelters and Legal Infrastructure in IPV Reporting

Does increased legal infrastructure lead to higher intimate partner violence (IPV) reporting and empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent IPV victims from seeking help, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents to the police nor accessing support services. I study the rollout of women’s shelters and the introduction of the 2002...

100 Years DIW Berlin

In 2025, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) will be 100 years old. The Centennial Celebration will take place on May 27, 2025 from 4 p.m. in the Langenbeck-Virchow-Haus in Berlin Mitte. Together with former and current employees, fellows, and friends, we will look back on 100 years of DIW Berlin’s contributions to economic research. Participation is only possible by...

Let's Switch to the Cloud: Cloud Usage and Its Effect on Labor Productivity

The advent of cloud computing promises to improve the way firms use IT solutions. Firms are expected to replace large and inflexible fixed-cost investments in IT with more targeted, variable spending on cloud solutions. This is also expected to increase firms' productivity by allowing them to quickly adapt their IT infrastructure to their specific needs. We assess this claim using firm-level data provided ...

Long-Term Effects of Equal Sharing: Evidence from Inheritance Rules for Land

Social Security and Retirement around the World: Lessons from a Long-Term Collaboration

Declining labor force participation of older men throughout the 20th century and recent increases in participation have generated substantial interest in understanding the effect of public pensions on retirement. The National Bureau of Economic Research's International Social Security (ISS) Project, a long-term collaboration among researchers in a dozen developed countries, has explored this and related ...

The Long Way to Gender Equality: Gender Pay Differences in Germany, 1871-2021: halshs-04424048

This paper provides the _rst time series of the gender earnings ratio for the full-time employed workforce in Germany since the 1870s and compares Ger- many's path with the Swedish and U.S. cases. The industrialization period yielded slow advances in economic gender relations due to women's delayed inclusion in the industrial workforce. The _rst half of the 20th century exhib- ited a marked leap. In ...

The Effect of Migration on Careers of Natives: Evidence from Long-Term Care

This paper examines the effect of increasing foreign staffing on the labor market outcomes of native workers in the German long-term care sector. Using administrative social security data covering the universe of long-term care workers and policy-induced exogenous variation, we find that increased foreign staffing reduces labor shortages but has diverging implications for the careers of native workers ...

Mental Health in East and West Germany from Reunification to the Present

This chapter provides the first extensive overview of mental health in Germany since reunification. Relying on data from the Socio-Economic Panel, an annual, representative panel study running since 1984 (in East Germany since 1990), this chapter reports the prevalence of mental health conditions in West and East Germany across 30 years. Specifically, the data provides insights into life satisfaction, ...