Comparisons are crucial in shaping evaluations of one’s own position. Following this notion, we investigated the role of historical, financial, partner, occupational, and regional pay referents in predicting the just gross hourly earnings in a representative sample of German workers. Looking at this broad range of pay referents, we find that higher reference earnings were generally associated with ...
Immunization by vaccination is one of the most important tools for fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet in many countries, immunization campaigns have been hampered by vaccine hesitancy within the population. Building on the idea that vaccination decisions are embedded in the broader societal context, we study the role of generalized trust—the belief that most people can generally be trusted—in vaccine ...
This cumulative thesis contributes to the investigation of the wage and wealth consequences of temporary employment in and outside of Europe by answering three more specific research questions in four articles. These are all motivated by recent large-scale global trends such as globalization and technological change, which have increased labor market uncertainties over the last few decades. The first ...
Do trade unions benefit from economic crises by attracting new members among workers concerned about job security? To address this question, we provide a comprehensive empirical investigation based on panel data from Germany, where workers individually decide on their membership. We analyse whether exogenously manipulated perceptions of job insecurity encourage individuals to join a union. Firm-level ...
Technological change and globalisation have been transforming the structure of labour demand in favour of workers performing cognitive tasks. Even though past research has found that labour force participation is an important determinant of fertility behaviour, few studies have addressed the fertility effects of the long-term structural changes of labour market. To fill this gap, we measure the cognitive ...
Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, this paper analyzes changes in the gender pay gap in West Germany between 1984 and 2020. The literature generally observes a catching-up of women over time with a slowdown since the mid-1990s and often concentrates on the USA. We present both an aggregate and detailed decomposition of changes in wages allowing us to directly test for changes in the components ...
Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper finds a statistically significant union wage premium in Germany of almost three percent, which is not simply a collective bargaining premium. Given that the union membership fee is typically about one percent of workers’ gross wages, this finding suggests that it pays off to be a union member. Our results show that the ...
The last decades have witnessed an unprecedented increase in women’s economic independence through higher educational attainment, labor force participation and an increase in the share of female-led households. However, up to date there is a gap in the literature concerning how this increase in independence has translated into women’s living standards, measured through disposable income. Using a combination ...
Online panel surveys are often criticized for their inability to cover the offline population, potentially resulting in coverage error. Previous research has demonstrated that non-internet users in fact differ from online individuals on several sociodemographic characteristics. In attempts to reduce coverage error due to missing the offline population, several probability-based online panels equip ...