Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Refuting the cliché of the distrustful manager

Although trust is fundamental to social and organizational functioning, the media often portray managers as distrusting, suggesting that distrust of others is a typical personality variable of successful leaders. This study puts the cliché of the distrustful manager to the test. Both self-report data (N = 32,926) and behavioral data (N = 924) from the German Socio-Economic Panel refute this cliché. ...

Being Unengaged at Work but Still Dedicating Time and Energy: A Longitudinal Study

Overcommitted individuals cannot withdraw from work obligations. We examine whether work goal engagement attenuates the negative effects of overcommitment on work and health outcomes. For overcommitted professionals it should matter whether they dedicate time and energy to work goals they feel bound to or to goals they do not feel attached to (unengaged overcommitment). In a longitudinal study of 752 ...

Family background variables as instruments for education in income regressions: A Bayesian analysis

The validity of family background variables instrumenting education in income regressions has been much criticized. In this paper, we use data from the 2004 German Socio-Economic Panel and Bayesian analysis to analyze to what degree violations of the strict validity assumption affect the estimation results. We show that, in case of moderate direct effects of the instrument on the dependent variable, ...

Reproducing Occupational Inequality: Marriage, Parenthood and the Gender Divide in Occupations

Does entrepreneurship pay for women and immigrants? A 30 year assessment of the socio-economic impact of entrepreneurial activity in Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984 to 2012, we explore income effects of self-employment for females and migrants. Controlling for the selection into self-employment, we differentiate the overall earnings differential between the self-employed and the wage-employed into an endowment effect (they are equipped with characteristics that positively affect earnings in either occupation) ...

Can beneficial antecedents to self‐employment be detrimental to entrepreneurial performance?

We hypothesize that risk aversion, plasticity, stability, and locus of control have different effects on a person's decision to enter entrepreneurship and the person's entrepreneurial performance. Empirical results reveal that plasticity and risk tolerance have positive effects on selection but negative effects on income derived in entrepreneurship. Stability, on the other hand, deters entry ...

International Outsourcing and Wage Rigidity: A Formal Approach and First Empirical Evidence

International Outsourcing effects on labor markets are mostly analyzed within flexible wage settings. Using a modern duality approach, this paper formally investigates differences occurring in industries with low skilled wage rigidity and, for the first time in literature, presents empirical evidence supporting the theoretical findings. Using a logit model to analyze microeconomic German panel data, ...

Labor Market Effects of International Outsourcing: How Measurement Matters

Information Asymmetry, Education Signals and the Case of Ethnic and Native Germans

This paper analyses the effects of education signals for Ethnic Germans and Germans without a migration background (“Native Germans”). We base our analysis on a sorting model with productivity enhancing effects of education. We compare whether the signalling value differs between the migrants and non-migrants in the German labour market. Starting from the theoretical result that only a separating equilibrium ...

The Sorting Value of Education: Is it Different for Ethnic and Native Germans?