Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The "Discovery" of Youth's Learning Potential Early in the Life Course. Project description, research questions, methods and design

“Underachievement” is a well-established educational research field. However, both longitudinal and interdisciplinary studies on the interplay between individuals’ learning potential and educational attainment are rare, as are analyses of life course consequences of underachievement. This psychological, sociological, and economic longitudinal study aims to contribute to our knowledge of social disparities ...

The Measurement and Importance of General Reasoning Potentials in Schools and Labor Markets: Pre-Test Report

Shaping Earnings Insecurity: Labor Market Policy and Institutional Factors

We examine the relationship between earnings insecurity, labor market policies/institutions, product market regulation, and macroeconomic shocks across Europe in the 1990s by means of the non‐linear least squares method. Earnings insecurity is proxied by transitory variability in earnings, which captures transitory earnings shocks, and by earnings volatility, which captures both permanent and transitory ...

Earnings Dynamics and Inequality in EU, 1994-2001

This paper uses ECHP for 14 EU countries to explore the dynamic structure of individual earnings and the extent to which changes in cross-sectional earnings inequality reflect transitory or permanent components of individual lifecycle earnings variation. Increases in inequality reflect increases in permanent differentials in four countries and increases in both components in two. Decreases in inequality ...

Equalizing or Disequalizing Lifetime Earnings Differentials? Earnings Mobility in the EU: 1994-2001

Do EU citizens have an increased opportunity to improve their position in the distribution of lifetime earnings? To what extent does earnings mobility work to equalize/disequalize longerterm earnings relative to cross-sectional inequality and how does it differ across the EU? Our basic assumption is that mobility measured over a horizon of 8 years is a good proxy for lifetime mobility. We used the ...

Increased Opportunity to Move Up the Economic Ladder? Earnings Mobility in EU: 1994-2001

Do EU citizens have an increased opportunity to improve their position in the distribution of earnings over time? This question is answered by exploring short and long-term wage mobility for males across 14 EU countries between 1994 and 2001 using ECHP. Mobility is evaluated using rank measures which capture positional movements in the distribution of earnings. All countries recording an increase in ...

Policy, Institutional Factors and Earnings Mobility

This paper uses ECHP and OECD data for 14 EU countries to explore the role of labour market factors in explaining cross-national differences in the dynamic structure of earnings: in permanent inequality, transitory inequality and earnings mobility. Based on ECHP, minimum distance estimator is used to decompose earnings inequality into the permanent and transitory components and compute earnings mobility. ...

Welfare: The Cheapest Country. Review of "The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism" by Goodin, Robert E. et al.

Essays in Empirical Public Economics

This Dissertation is devoted to the empirical analysis of the consequences of government action. In particular, it investigates the distributional impact of fundamental tax reform and the welfare cost of bequest taxation. Further chapters assess the sustainability of public budgets in light of demographic change and the productivity impact of air pollution.

The Luxembourg Wealth Study - A cross-country comparable database for household wealth research

The paper describes the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS), an international project launched in 2003 by the Luxembourg Income Study and by institutions from Canada, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The aim of the project is to assemble and to harmonise existing micro-data on household wealth, in order to provide a sounder basis for comparative ...