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Measuring Well-Being: W3 Indicators to Complement GDP

By: Marco Giesselmann, Richard Hilmer, Nico A. Siegel, Gert G. Wagner in: DIW Economic Bulletin 05/2013.Plenty of people in Germany, including politicians and researchers, believe that gross domestic product (GDP) is an outdated indicator of a society’s prosperity. Therefore, at the end of 2010, the German Bundestag, the federal parliament, established a study commission (Enquete Kommission) ...

Low Level of Equal Opportunities in Germany: Family Background Shapes Individual Economic Success

For many years, securing equal life opportunities has been a normative goal shared by all democratic societies in the western world. Although, in principle, all citizens enjoy the same rights, in reality, individual life opportunities still vary according to family background which, in turn, shapes the prevailing pattern of social inequality. This is not a specifically German phenomenon. Based on a ...

In Germany, Equal Opportunities Are Almost as Bad as in the US and Much Worse Than in Denmark: Nine Questions to Daniel Schnitzlein

Measuring Well-Being: W3 Indicators to Complement GDP

Plenty of people in Germany, including politicians and researchers, believe that gross domestic product (GDP) is an outdated indicator of a society's prosperity. Therefore, at the end of 2010, the German Bundestag, the federal parliament, established a study commission (Enquete Kommission) tasked with developing an alternative to GDP for measuring growth, wealth, and quality of life. This commission ...

Trick or Treat? Maternal Involuntary Job Loss and Children's Non-cognitive Skills

Negative effects of job loss on adults such as considerable fall in income have long been examined. If job loss has negative consequences for adults, it may spread to their children. But potential effects on children's non-cognitive skills and the related mechanisms have been less examined. This paper uses propensity score matching to analyze maternal involuntary job loss and its potential causal effect ...

Income Comparisons, Income Formation, and Subjective Well-Being: New Evidence on Envy versus Signaling

Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses 307,465 observations for subjective well-being and its covariates from Germany, 1990-2009, to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development, and how such changes are related to changes in the nature of income formation. By conceptualizing a person's ...

Sectors under Scrutiny: Evaluation of Indicators to Assess the Risk of Carbon Leakage in the UK and Germany

Are Women more Attracted than Men to Cooperation?

Fertility and Female Labor Supply

Abstract: In this paper we introduce a new IV strategy based on IVF induced fertility variation in infertile families to estimate the causal effect of children on their parents' labor supply using the census of IVF treated women(and spouses) in Denmark. Because the observed chances of IVF success do not depend on the labor market histories of women before they enter the IVF treatment, IVF...

Quality Labeling: Too Much Information Could Impair Effectiveness of Certification

Following a series of food scandals, consumer confidence in the industry has been shaken. However, criticism has not only been directed at the industry itself, but also at the providers of quality seals who were so quick to certify the products. There are increasing calls for improved transparency and, with regard to organization and the rules of certification, more transparency does indeed make ...