Previous political research on personality has largely focused on voting and partisan attitudes. This article explores the direct and the conditional relationship between the Big Five personality traits and welfare state attitudes in the context of five different areas or needs contexts for welfare provision. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel 2002, we obtain robust evidence that...
This paper explores the causal relationship between vote outcomes in different elections. We ask: (1) Does the partisan identity of the mayor influence the voter's decision in subsequent town council elections? (2) Do voters condition their vote for the mayor on the result of the last council election? The analysis mainProd. Type: FLPly relies on a regression discontinuity design focusing on close ...
Researchers in the US have consistently reported substantial - not just statistically significant - links between religious belief and practice, and improved health and longevity. In this paper we report evidence for Germany, using data from thelong-running, nationally representative German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP 1984). The SOEP dataset includes multiple measures of health, plus many "controls" ...
A large body of literature points out that joint taxation of married couples with full income splitting (Ehegattensplitting) is an important reason for the relatively low labor force participation of married women in Germany. This paper investigates the relative gains of joint taxation for married couples by comparing effective tax burdens for three groups of tax units between Germany and the UK. Using ...
Safe assets are the lubricant of the financial system. They serve as a store of value, to meet regulatory requirements, and as a pricing benchmark. Some researchers identify a severe and chronic global safe asset shortage; others disagree, while empirical evidence remains ambiguous. In the post-Lehman world, the availability of safe assets entails new policy challenges. While still a potential source ...
BAMS is a joint seminar by the DIW Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance, the HU Berlin and the WZB.