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SOEP 2013 – Documentation of the Person-Related Meta-dataset HEALTH for SOEP v30

Individual Insurance and Mutual Support Arrangements in Developing Countries

Insurance coverage in the developing world is expanding rapidly. As recently as 2005, only a small number of commercial insurers offered insurance products that specifically targeted low-income people (‘microinsurance’). Seven years later, in 2012, more than half of the world’s 50 largest insurance companies were involved in microinsurance. International donor organizations, which identified the promotion ...

Trade Policy Uncertainty and the WTO

Do WTO commitments reduce the risk of trade policy reversals? To address this question, we rely on the theoretical model of varying cooperative tariffs by Bagwell and Staiger (1990) to specify our empirical model for the probability of a tariff increase. We then study how WTO tariff commitments affect this probability. We estimate our model using a database of WTO bound tariffs that we built for all ...

Inequality and Defined Benefit Pensions when Life Expectancy is Heterogeneous

This study analyzes the distributional effects of a defined pension benefit system under heterogeneous life expectancies. For this purpose, we propose a methodology that quantifies life expectancy-based regressive redistribution using a life expectancy-adjusted benchmark scenario. This methodology is combined with a structural life-cycle model of labor supply, retirement and consumption decisions...

Matthias Kleiner, President of the Leibniz Association congratulates Graduates of the DIW Graduate Center

Last Friday, twelve junior scientists received their certificates at the 2014 Commencement Ceremony of the Graduate Center at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). They were congratulated by the Dean of DIW Graduate Center, Helmut Lütkepohl, the Executive Board of the DIW Berlin, as well as Matthias Kleiner, President of the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft. In his speech, Mr. Kleiner emphasized ...

Early Birds in Day Care: The Social Gradient in Starting Day Care and Children's Non-cognitive Skills

In recent years, almost all children below school age in Western industrialized countries have some experience of attending day care institutions. However, the age at which children enter day care and therefore the overall time spent in day carevaries substantially. We investigate the potential impact of later day care entry on the social and emotional behaviour of children, one important aspect of ...

Honey, I got Fired! A Longitudinal Dyadic Analysis of the Effect of Unemployment on Life Satisfaction in Couples

Previous research on unemployment and life satisfaction has focused on the effects of unemployment on individuals but neglected the effects on their partners. In the present study, we used dyadic multilevel models to analyze longitudinal data from 2,973 couples selected from a German representative panel study to examine the effects of unemployment on life satisfaction in couples over several years. ...

A Disadvantaged Childhood Matters More if Local Unemployment Is High

Using multilevel models on the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study this paper shows that disadvantaged young adults (16‐35 years old) are more affected by the business cycle than their similarly educated counterparts from more advantaged backgrounds. We propose that a disadvantaged background lowers desirability on the labour market, which matters more to employers as the labour market tightens. When ...

Would I Care if I Knew? Image Concerns and Social Confirmation in Giving

This paper experimentally investigates the nature of image concerns in gift giving. For this, we test variants of dictator and impunity games where the influences of social preferences on behavior are kept constant across all games. Givers maximize material payoffs by pretending to be fair when receivers do not know the actual surplus size, implying that portraying an outward appearance of norm compliance ...

Maternity Leave and Its Consequences for Subsequent Careers in Germany

This paper analyzes the wage development of mothers interrupting their careers, in comparison to the wages of men who do not face a parental interruption. We estimate OLS regression models for different subcategories defined by age and point in time. We use data from the German Socioeconomic Panel from 1984 to 2011, to show that wages and the financial penalty for maternity differ according to the ...