-
SOEPpapers 772 / 2015
Well‐being (i.e., satisfaction, happiness) is a latent variable, impossible to observe directly. Hence, questionnaires ask people to grade their well‐being in different life domains. The most common practice—comparing well‐being by means of descriptive analysis or linear regressions—ignores that the underlying collected well‐being information is ordinal. If the well‐being function is ordinal, then ...
2015| Carsten Schröder, Shlomo Yitzhaki
-
DIW Roundup 71 / 2015
Various proposals are currently being suggested to encourage higher foreign direct investment in countries within the euro area, particularly between individual member states. The intended goal is to assist in stimulating economic growth in the euro area. Against this background, this article provides an overview of the large and heterogeneous academic literature on the influence of direct investment ...
2015| Guido Baldi, Jakob Miethe
-
SOEPpapers 767 / 2015
The aim of this study is to estimate the causal effect of cultural participation on health status. Cultural activities may directly impact upon health through palliative coping or substituting health-compromising behaviors. Cultural engagement may also facilitate the development of social networks, which can improve health via social support and the dissemination of social health norms. Previous estimates ...
2015| Lars Thiel
-
SOEPpapers 768 / 2015
This paper theoretically and empirically examines the impact of self-managed working time (SMWT) on employee effort. As a means of increased worker autonomy, SMWT can theoretically increase effort via intrinsic motivation and reciprocal behaviour, but can lead to a decrease of effort due to a loss of control. Based on German individual-level panel data, we find that SMWT employees exert higher effort ...
2015| Michael Beckmann, Thomas Cornelissen, Matthias Kräkel
-
SOEPpapers 769 / 2015
This paper investigates two mechanisms through which education may affect cognitive skills in adolescence: the role of instructional quantity and the timing ofinstruction with respect to age. To identify causal effects, I exploit a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment: between 2001 and 2007, the academic-track high school (Gymnasium) was reduced by one ...
2015| Sarah Dahmann
-
Refereed essays Web of Science
The transformation of the European electricity system requires substantial investment in transmission capacity to facilitate cross-border trade and to efficiently integrate renewable energy sources. However, network planning in the EU is still mainly a national prerogative. In contrast to other studies aiming to identify the pan-European (continental) welfare-optimal transmission expansion, we investigate ...
In:
European Journal of Operational Research
247 (2015), 1, S. 191-203
| Daniel Huppmann, Jonas Egerer
-
Refereed essays Web of Science
While breastfeeding is associated with health benefits for both mothers and children, it may also make it difficult for mothers to return to the labor market early. Maternity and parental leave regulations have been developed to mitigate this conflict. In 2007, Germany passed a reform introducing a new parental leave benefit (Elterngeld). In this paper, we address the question of whether the new parental ...
In:
Review of Economics of the Household
14 (2016), 4, S. 859-890
| Anita Kottwitz, Anja Oppermann, C. Katharina Spieß
-
Refereed essays Web of Science
This paper aims at studying the causal effects of graduating from a university with an honors degree on subsequent earnings. While a rich body of literature has focused on estimating returns to human capital, few studies have analyzed returns at the very top of the education distribution. We highlight the importance of honors degrees for future labor market success in the context of German law graduates. ...
In:
Labour Economics
34 (2015), S. 39-50
| Ronny Freier, Mathias Schumann, Thomas Siedler
-
Refereed essays Web of Science
Through an intertemporal budget constraint, jurisdictions may gain advantages in tax and spending competition by ‘competing’ on debt. While the existing spatial econometric literature focuses on tax and spending competition, very little is known about spatial interaction via public debt. If jurisdictions compete for mobile capital to finance public spending, they may compete in debt levels as well ...
In:
Regional Science & Urban Economics
53 (2015) 20-37
| Rainald Borck, Frank M. Fossen, Ronny Freier, Thorsten Martin
-
Interview
Professor Fratzscher, German monetary union came into force 25 years ago on July 1, 1990. On the same day, capital controls in Europe were removed, laying the foundations for a European monetary union and the euro. What lessons can Europe learn from the German monetary union?In 1990, there was considerable criticism because German monetary union was implemented so rapidly. In hindsight, I think that ...
01.07.2015