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Austerity and Private Debt

This study provides empirical evidence that the costs of austerity crucially depend on the level of private indebtedness. In particular, fiscal consolidations lead to severe contractions when implemented in high private-debt states. Contrary, fiscal consolidations have no significant effect on economic activity when private debt is low. These results are robust to alternative definitions of private-debt ...

Growing up with a Single Mother and Life Satisfaction in Adulthood: A Test of Mediating and Moderating Factors

Single parenthood is increasingly common in Western societies but only little is known about its long-term effects. We therefore studied life satisfaction among 641 individuals (ages 18–66 years) who spent their entire childhood with a single mother, 1539 individuals who spent part of their childhood with both parents but then experienced parental separation, and 21,943 individuals who grew up with ...

Levels of and Changes in Life Satisfaction Predict Mortality Hazards: Disentangling the Role of Physical Health, Perceived Control, and Social Orientation

It is well documented that well-being typically evinces precipitous decrements at the end of life. However, research has primarily taken a postdictive approach by knowing the outcome (date of death) and aligning, in retrospect, how well-being has changed for people with documented death events. In the present study, we made use of a predictive approach by examining whether and how levels of and changes ...

Terminal Decline in Well-Being: The Role of Multi-Indicator Constellations of Physical Health and Psychosocial Correlates

Well-being is often relatively stable across adulthood and old age, but typically exhibits pronounced deteriorations and vast individual differences in the terminal phase of life. However, the factors contributing to these differences are not well understood. Using up to 25-year annual longitudinal data obtained from 4,404 now-deceased participants of the nationwide German Socio-Economic Panel Study ...

Estimation of Structural Vector Autoregressive Models

In this survey, estimation methods for structural vector autoregressive models are presented in a systematic way. Both frequentist and Bayesian methods are considered. Depending on the model setup and type of restrictions, least squares estimation, instrumental variables estimation, method-of-moments estimation and generalized method-of-moments are considered. The methods are presented in a unified ...

No Gender Difference in Willingness to Compete when Competing against Self

We report on two experiments investigating whether there is a gender difference in the willingness to compete against oneself (self-competition), similar to what is found when competing against others (other-competition). In one laboratory and one online market experiment, involving a total of 1,200 participants, we replicate the gender-gap in willingness to other-compete but find no evidence of a ...

Day-Care Availability, Maternal Employment and Satisfaction of Parents: Evidence from Cultural and Policy Variations in Germany

This study investigates how the availability and expansion of childcare services for children aged under 3 years relate to the subjective wellbeing of German mothers and fathers. It extends previous studies by examining in more detail the relationship between day-care availability and use, maternal employment and parental subjective wellbeing during early childhood in a country with expanding childcare ...

Changes in Life Satisfaction when Losing One's Spouse: Individual Differences in Anticipation, Reaction, Adaptation and Longevity in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP)

Losing a spouse is among the most devastating events that may occur in people's lives. We use longitudinal data from 1,224 participants in the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) to examine (a) how life satisfaction changes with the experience of spousal loss; (b) whether socio-demographic factors and social and health resources moderate spousal loss-related changes in life satisfaction; and (c) ...

The Linked Employer–Employee Study of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP-LEE): Content, Design and Research Potential

Do Media Data Help to Predict German Industrial Production?

In an uncertain world, decisions by market participants are based on expectations. Therefore, sentiment indicators reflecting expectations have a proven track record at predicting economic variables. However, survey respondents largely perceive the world through media reports. Here, we want to make use of that. We employ a rich dataset provided by Media Tenor International, based on sentiment analysis ...