Research usually finds a positive size-efficiency relationship, but few studies focus on sectors dominated by small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). This paper fills this gap by analyzing this relationship in the German mechanical engineering industry sector, which is both successful and increasingly dominated by SMEs. The analysis, using a large and representative dataset, finds that small and large ...
Students from families with no academic experience are still underrepresented at German Universities, despite the fact that they obtain a university-entrance degree; they often take up another track of post-secondary education. What measures of educational policy could influence students to rather take up tertiary education than an alternative track? A new research project jointly conducted by DIW...
In this paper I investigate the causal returns to education for different educational groups in Germany by employing a new method by Klein and Vella (2010) that bases identification on the presence of conditional heteroskedasticity. Compared to IV methods, key advantages of this approach are unbiased estimates in the absence of instruments and parameter interpretation that is not bounded to local average ...
In most industrialized countries, the work and family patterns of the baby boomers characterized by more heterogeneous working careers and less stable family lives setthem apart from preceding cohorts. Thus, it is of crucial importance to understand how these different work and family lives are linked to the boomers' prospective material well-being as they retire. This paper presents a new and unique ...
Previous studies report a wide range of estimates for how female labor supply responds to childcare prices. We shed new light on this question using a reform that raised the prices of public daycare. Parents respond by reducing public daycare and increasing childcare at home. Parents also reduce informal childcare indicating that public daycare and informal childcare are complements. Female labor force ...
A lack of cultural integration is often blamed for hindering immigrant families' economic progression. This paper is a first attempt to explore whether immigrant parents' ethnic identity affects the next generation's human capital accumulation in the host country. Empirical results based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) indicate that maternal majority as well as paternal minority ...
Delay of gratification (DoG) and delay discounting (DD) are behavioral measures of self-regulation and impulsivity. Whereas DoG refers to the postponement of gratification, DD involves the devaluation of a reward over time. Previous studies have demonstrated associations between paternal self-control, paternal personality traits, parenting styles, maternal intelligence, and children's self-regulation. ...
