Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Effects of Job Entry Restrictions on Economic Integration. Evidence for Recent Ethnic German Immigrants

Parental impact on attitude formation: A siblings study on worries about immigration

The existing literature on attitudes towards immigration has not accounted for the potential effect of unobservable home education on attitude formation. Yet, factors such as parents’ knowledge, their morals, and their weltanschauung are likely to influence the attitudes of the next generation.Their omission from the analysis thus threatens to lead to erroneous conclusions. Utilizing siblings data ...

Life-cycle variations in the association between current and lifetime earnings: Evidence for German natives and guest workers

In many economic models a central variable of interest is lifetime or permanent income which is not observed in survey data sets and typically proxied by annual income information. To assess the quality of such approximations, we use a unique source of lifetime earnings — the German pension system — and focus on two important issues that have been largely ignored in the existing literature. The first ...

Management Quality, Firm Size, and Managerial Compensation: A Comparison between Germany and the UK

Analytical Prediction of Transitions Probabilities in the Conditional Logit Model

This note derives analytical transition probabilities following a shock to the deterministic component of the conditional logit model. The solution draws on the post-estimation distribution of the error component, identified by use of a utility maximization interpretation of observed choices.

The Post-Unification German Labor Market

Television Role Models and Fertility: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

In this paper we study the effect of television exposure on fertility. We exploit a natural experiment that took place in Germany after WWII. For topographical reasons, Western TV programs, which promoted one/no child families, could not be received in certain parts of East Germany. Using an IV approach, we find robust evidence that watching West German TV results in lower fertility. This conclusion ...

Why are East Germans not more mobile? Analyzing the impact of local networks on migration intentions

Individuals’ preferences in transition regions are still shaped by the former communist system. We test this ‘Communism legacy’ hypothesis by examining the impact of acculturation in a communist regime on social network participation and, as a consequence, on preferences for spatial mobility. We focus on the paradigmatic case of East Germany where mobility intentions seem to be substantially weaker ...

Lifetime Earnings Inequality in Germany

A Head-to-Head Comparison of Augmented Wealth in Germany and the United States

We examine the composition of augmented household wealth, the sum of net worth and pension wealth, in the United States and Germany. Pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth of about 48% in the United States and 61% in Germany. When pension wealth is included in household wealth, the Gini coefficient falls from 0.889 to 0.700 in the United States and from 0.755 to 0.508 in ...