Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Income Tax Compliance Costs of Working Individuals: Empirical Evidence from Germany

We analyze the compliance costs of individual taxpayers resulting from the German income tax (tax year 2007). Using survey data that have been raised between December 2008 and April 2009, we find evidence for a considerably higher cost burden of self-employed taxpayers. Taxable income and a higher education (university degree) are positively correlated with compliance costs, while the time effort of ...

Income deprivation and mental well-being: The role of non-cognitive skills

We show that the positive relation between income deprivation and mental health is affected by an individual's non-cognitive skills. Income deprivation is operationalized as the Yitzhaki index, i.e., as a function of the sum of income differences between an individual and others in her reference group who are more affluent. Non-cognitive skills are extracted from a Locus of Control questionnaire ...

Overeducation Dynamics and Personality

We use the 2000-2008 waves of the German Socioeconomic Panel to examine overeducation transitions. The results are based on a first-order Markov model that allows us to account for both the initial conditions problem and for potential endogeneity in attrition. We find that overeducation dynamics, especially the probability of entering overeducation, is significantly influenced by personality. Notwithstanding ...

Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Panel Data

This paper uses data from the 2000–08 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel dataset (SOEP) to assess the impact of deprivation in various life domains upon individual well-being. Unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for by means of a random effects model extended to include a Mundlak term and explicit controls for the respondents' personality traits. The paper shows that people care about ...

Unemployment persistence: How important are non-cognitive skills?

Using the 2000–2013 waves of the German SOEP, this paper shows that non-cognitive skills have a predictive power on unemployment transitions. The econometric approach is based on a dynamic random effects probit model that takes account of the unobserved individual heterogeneity and the state dependence that surrounds unemployment transitions. The estimation results show that the risk of unemployment ...

Life Events and Personality Trait Change

Theory and research have emphasized the impact of life events on personality trait change. In this article, we review prospective research on personality trait change in response to nine major life events in the broader domains of love and work. We expected to find that life events lead to personality trait change to the extent that they have a lasting influence on individuals' thoughts, feelings, ...

Welfare Effects of the Euro Cash Changeover: Do Assumptions Really Matter?

Manski’s partial identification allows less restrictive, therefore, more credible assumptions than the assumption of random treatment assignment to solve the evaluation problem. In this article the theory of partial identification is applied to the welfare effect of the euro cash changeover. When evaluating the impact of the euro cash changeover on individual welfare, Wunder et al. (2008) face the ...

The Two Faces of Fearless Dominance and Their Relations to Vocational Success

We tested Lykken’s (1995) theory that the personality trait of fearless dominance (FD) can result in positive or negative life outcomes depending on whether the socialization process was successful or not. We tested FD’s predictive and moderated relations with vocational success over a time interval of 4 years. We found that the relations between FD and change in income were moderated by level of education. ...

Does Trust Pay Off?

We exploit a data driven latent class model to classify individuals in two distinct trust classes: one for low, and one for high trust individuals. Subsequently, by entering class membership in a two-wave panel analysis we find that belonging to the high trust class positively influences an individual’s economic performance, as measured by individual wage earnings. We show that trust related income ...

The Effect of Motivation on Self-employment Duration in Germany: Necessity versus Opportunity Entrepreneurs