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Unemployment and Portfolio Choice: Does Persistence Matter?

Households can rely on private savings or on public unemployment insurance to hedge against the risk of becoming unemployed. These hedging mechanisms are used differently across countries. In this paper, we use a life cycle model to study the effects of unemployment on the portfolio choice of households in the US and in Germany. We distinguish short- and long-term unemployment and find that, in case ...

Wealth Distribution within Couples

While most studies on wealth inequality focus on the inequality between households, this paper examines the distribution of wealth within couples. For this purpose, we make use of unique individual level micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). In married and cohabiting couples men's net worth, on average, is 33,000 euros higher than women's. We look at five different sets of factors ...

The Emotional Timeline of Unemployment: Anticipation, Reaction, and Adaptation

Unemployment continues to be one of the major challenges in industrialized societies. Aside from its economic dimensions and societal repercussions, questions concerning the individual experience of unemployment have recently attracted increasing attention. Although many studies have documented the detrimental effects of unemployment for subjective well-being, they overwhelmingly focus on life satisfaction ...

How Learning a Musical Instrument Affects the Development of Skills

Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality, time use and ambition using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our findings suggest ...

Natural Disaster, Policy Action, and Mental Well-Being: The Case of Fukushima

We study the impact of the Fukushima disaster on people's mental well-being in another industrialized country, more than 5000 miles distant. The meltdown significantlyincreased environmental concerns by 20% among the German population. Subsequent drastic policy action permanently shut down the oldest nuclear reactors, implemented the phase-out of the remaining ones, and proclaimed the transition to ...

Evaluating Programmes in Conflict-Affected Areas

We provide an overview over the concepts, pitfalls and challenges involved in conducting scientifically sound impact evaluations and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in conflict-affected and fragile states or areas. We consider both interventions aimed at preventing and overcoming war, conflict and insecurity as well as interventions targeted at common socio-economic outcomes such as livelihoods, ...

The Transmission of Oil and Food Prices to Consumer Prices: Evidence for the MENA Countries

This paper investigates the effects of global oil and food price shocks to consumer prices in Middle East-North African (MENA) countries using threshold cointegration methods. Oil and food price shocks increase domestic prices in the long run, whereby the impact of food prices dominates. While global prices are weakly exogenous, consumer prices respond to deviations from the equilibrium relationship. ...

Emission performance standards - International experiences and discussion in Germany

10th International Young Scholar German Socio-Economic Panel Symposium

We are pleased to announce the 10th anniversary "International Young Scholar German Socio-Economic Panel Symposium".The symposium provides an opportunity for doctoral students and young postdoctoral researchers of all disciplines (e.g. economics, demography, psychology, sociology, public health, geography) to present empirical research in progress - carried out with panel data ...

The Transmission of Oil and Food Prices to Consumer Prices: Evidence for the MENA Countries

This paper investigates the effects of global oil and food price shocks to consumer prices in Middle East-North African (MENA) countries using threshold cointegration methods. Oil and food price shocks increase domestic prices in the long run, whereby the impact of food prices dominates. While global prices are weakly exogenous, consumer prices respond to deviations from the equilibrium relationship. ...