Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Socio-economic differences in mortality. Implications for pensions policy

Testosterone Administration Reduces Lying in Men

Lying is a pervasive phenomenon with important social and economic implications. However, despite substantial interest in the prevalence and determinants of lying, little is known about its biological foundations. Here we study a potential hormonal influence, focusing on the steroid hormone testosterone, which has been shown to play an important role in social behavior. In a double-blind placebo-controlled ...

Female Labour Force Participation and the Big Five

This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits and female labor force participation. While research on the role of cognitive skills for individual labor market success has a long tradition in economics, comparatively little is known about the channels through which non-cognitive skills affect individual labor market behavior. There is striking evidence that personality traits play ...

Gender Identity and Womens' Supply of Labor and Non-market Work: Panel Data Evidence for Germany

This paper aims to verify results of the innovative study on gender identity for the USA by Bertrand et al. (2015) for Germany. They found that women who would earn more than their husbands distort their labor market outcome in order not to violate traditional gender identity norms. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study we also find that the distribution of the share of income earned ...

Forecasting Behavioural and Distributional Effects of the Bofinger-Walwei Model using Microsimulation

Since Germany's social assistance reform ("Hartz-IV-Reform") in 2005 there has been a strong increase in the number of working poor and long-term unemployed. This development is often attributed to the remaining disincentives of the reformed social assistance to take up a low-paid full time job. Therefore, several proposals have been worked out to reduce these disincentives. In this ...

Restricted likelihood ratio testing in linear mixed models with general error covariance structure

We consider the problem of testing for zero variance components in linear mixed models with correlated or heteroscedastic errors. In the case of independent and identically distributed errors, a valid test exists, which is based on the exact finite sample distribution of the restricted likelihood ratio test statistic under the null hypothesis. We propose to make use of a transformation to derive the ...

Gender Differences in Poverty: A Cross-National Study

Essays on Framing Effects in Experimental Economics

Voluntary Turnover: What We Measure and What It (Really) Means

In this paper, we run regression analyses to explain voluntary turnover intentions with data from more than 5,000 employees and with about 250 explanatory variables. The findings of our multi-factor approach highlight the fact that previous empirical research might have over-estimated the impact and significance of many factors. We show the relevance of the so-called omitted variable bias to our findings ...

Returns to Education and Experience in Self-Employment: Evidence from Germany