Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Emotions and Risk Attitudes

Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people’s emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large panel data set, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as signi<U+FB01>cant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness ...

Generation Y: Do millennials need a partner to be happy?

Introduction: Empirical evidence on Ronald Inglehart's theory of value change shows that subsequent generations show a decline in values of physical and economic security (materialism) in favor of an increase in values of self-expression and autonomy (postmaterialism). Methods: We investigate in a pre-registered study whether Inglehart's theory also applies to partnership, such that millennials ...

The Economic Implications of Migration

Diese Dissertation besteht aus vier empirischen Kapiteln aus dem Bereich der Migrationsökonomik. Kapitel 1 untersucht die Auswirkungen von Aufenthaltsbeschränkungen auf die Teilnahme an Integrationskursen und auf die Sprachentwicklung von Geflüchteten. Ein neu eingeführtes Gesetz, die "Wohnsitzauflage", beschränkt Geflüchtete mit einem längerfristigen Aufenthaltsstatus in der Wahl ihres ersten ...

Estimating and Explaining the Prevalence of Tuberculosis for Asylum Seekers Upon Their Arrival in Germany

Up until recently incidences of tuberculosis (TB) had been declining for many years in Germany. The rise in TB cases coincided with a large increase in the number of people applying for asylum. We combine data from various sources to estimate the at-entry prevalence of TB for asylum seekers from 18 countries of origin and rely on survey data to explain the varying risk of suffering from TB. Our results ...

Three Essays in Experimental Economics

Behavioral economics evolves around the psychological underpinnings of economic decision-making. Over the last decades, it has become an established field of economics and has shed new light on our understanding of important economic questions. Many empirical evidences that contribute to the advancement of the behavioral approach are established with data from experiments, either in the lab or in the ...

Intertemporal Choices of Children and Adults from Poor Roma Communities: A Case Study from Slovakia

Poverty may have negative consequences on people's economic behavior and literature has documented close links between time discounting and poverty. This paper investigates intertemporal choices made by children and adults from segregated Roma communities in Slovakia. The study finds that fewer children than adults prefer smaller-sooner to larger-later amounts (referred to as "quasi-impatience"). ...

Integrating Refugees and Asylum Seekers into the German Economy and Society: Empirical Evidence and Policy Objectives

Essays on Methods for Causal Inference

This dissertation consists of three papers sharing the objective to analyze how machine learning methods can be useful to economists and econometricians in their pursuit to understand causal mechanisms operating in the economy. Such causal knowledge is essential when designing policies that help achieve societal goals. ML techniques are increasingly applied in and adapted to practical policy settings. ...

Quantifying the Economic, Linguistic, and Social Benefits for Refugees Participating in a Federal German Integration Course

In 2005, the German government introduced various integration courses in order to better support migrants and refugees. Since 2010, the refugee population in Germany has exponentially increased, particularly after Chancellor Merkel’s 2015 decision to admit more than one million refugees. This study evaluates the efficacy of these integration courses by examining the extent to which participation in ...

Mental Health over the Life Course: Evidence for a U-Shape?

We aim to identify the age-profile of mental health while introducing minimal bias to reach identification. Using mental health data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) we apply first difference estimation to derive an unbiased estimate of the second derivative of the age effect as well as an estimate up to a linear period trend of the first derivative. Next, we use a battery of estimators ...