Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Measuring the Use of Human Resources Practices and Employee Attitudes: The Linked Personnel Panel

This paper introduces a new data source available for HRM researchers and personnel economists,the Linked Personnel Panel (LPP). The LPP is a longitudinal and representative employer-employee data set covering establishments in Germany and designed for quantitative empirical HR research. The LPP offers a unique structure. First, the data set combines employer and employee surveys that can be matched ...

Social Contacts and the Economic Performance of Immigrants: A Panel Study of Immigrants in Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we examined the impact of social contacts on immigrant occupational status and income. In addition to general social contacts, we also analyzed the effects of bonding (i.e., co-ethnic) and bridging (i.e., inter-ethnic) ties on economic outcomes. Results show that general social contacts have a positive effect on the occupational status and, in particular, ...

Relative to What? Cross-national Picture of European Poverty Measured by Regional, National and European Standards

Three Essays in Empirical Economics

Labor Market Status and Transitions During the Pre-Retirement Years: Learning from International Differences

Mommies’ Girls Get Dresses, Daddies’ Boys Get Toys: Gender Preferences in Poland and their Implications

We examine the relationship of child gender with family and economic outcomes using a large dataset from the Polish Household Budgets’ Survey (PHBS) for years 2003-2009. Apart from studying the effects of gender on family stability, fertility and mothers’ labor market outcomes, we take advantage of the PHBS’ detailed expenditure module to examine effects of gender on consumption patterns. We find that ...

Skewed, Persistent and High before Death: Medical Spending in Germany

We use claims panel data from a big German private health insurer to provide detailed individual-level evidence on medical spending between 2005 and 2011. This includes evidence on the distribution of medical spending, the dependence of medical spending on age and other demographic characteristics, its persistence, and how medical spending evolves in the years before death. Our main findings are that ...

Fast Methods for Jackknifing Inequality Indices

The jackknife is a resampling method that uses subsets of the original database by leaving out one observation at a time from the sample. The paper outlines a procedure to obtain jackknife estimates for several inequality indices with only a few passes through the data. The number of passes is independent of the number of observations. Hence, the method provides an efficient way to obtain standard ...

Social Jealousy and Stigma: Negative Externalities of Social Assistance Payments in Germany

This paper examines the role of social assistance payments (SAP or Sozialhilfe) in determining levels of life satisfaction in Germany using the SOEP 1995-2004. We find strong evidence that individuals in Germany are negatively influenced by increased SAP payments controlling for income, whether or not they actually receive such payments (stigma and social jealousy). While there are obvious benefits ...

You're Fired! The Causal Negative Effect of Entry Unemployment on Life Satisfaction

This paper examines the impact of unemployment on life satisfaction for Germany 1984–2006, using a sample of men and women from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Across the board we find large significant negative effects for unemployment on life satisfaction.This paper expands on previous cornerstone research from Winkelmann and Winkelmann (1998) and explicitly identifies truly exogenous unemployment ...