(joint with A. Knabe und R. Schöb)Unemployment leaves scars since it lowers workers' life satisfaction even when they are reemployed. Using German panel data, we test whether unemployment experience prior to retirement lowers well-being in retirement. Although retired people report the less life satisfaction the more unemployment they experienced, we cannot attribute this difference to...
Today, Germany's citizens are happier on average than at any other point in time since reunification. Even though more than 20 years have passed, the average level of happiness in eastern Germany is still significantly lower than that in western Germany. This is demonstrated by the most recent long-term Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) data gathered by TNS Infratest Sozialforschung in collaboration ...
Following a decline last year and stagnation in 2013, the construction industry's economic prospects for 2014 are looking noticeably brighter. DIW Berlin expects more than six percent nominal growth for construction in Germany, or four percent in real terms, primarily as a result of persistently brisk residential construction activity and recovery in public-sector building. The core construction industry ...
Multiplicative growth processes that are subject to random shocks often have a skewed distribution of outcomes. In a number of incentivized laboratory experiments we show that a large majority of participants either strongly underestimate skewness or ignore it completely. Participants misperceive the outcome distribution's spread to be far too narrow-band and they estimate the median to lie too close ...
Abstract: The paper studies the causal effects of graduating from university with an honors degree on subsequent labor market outcomes. While a rich literature has focused on the identification of the returns to human capital, few studies could analyze returns at the very top of the education distribution. We highlight the importance of honors degrees for future labor market success in the context...
This paper is the first to analyze the impact of family background on permanent earnings based on sibling correlations in Germany and to provide a cross-country comparison of Germany, Denmark, and USA. The main findings are that family and community background has a stronger influence on permanent earnings in Germany than in Denmark, and a comparable influence is found in USA. This holds true for both ...
