Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Structural Change of the Production Process and Unemployment in Germany (Kieler Studien 307)

Inheritance in Germany 1911 to 2009: A Mortality Multiplier Approach

We estimate the size of inheritance and gift flows in Germany for selected years over the last century, applying the methodology used by Piketty (2011) for France and combining national accounts, tax statistics and survey data (mainly the German Socio-Economic Panel, SOEP). The data clearly supports the finding of a U-shaped evolution. The annual flow of inheritance and gifts was almost 15% of national ...

Income Inequality over the Later-life Course: A Comparative Analysis of Seven OECD Countries

Wage Rigidities in Western Germany? Microeconometric Evidence from the 1990s

This paper investigates whether and in what sense the west German wage structure has been 'rigid' in the 1990s. To test the hypothesis that a rigid wage structure has been responsible for rising low-skilled unemployment, I propose a methodology which makes less restrictive identifying assumptions than some previous related work. I find that the relative stability of educational wage premia ...

A Test of the 'Krugman Hypothesis' for the United States, Britain, and Western Germany

Differences in Labour Markets Across the Atlantic

Relative Demand and Supply of Skills and Wage Rigidity in the United States, Britain and Western Germany

I extend a two-skill group model by Katz andMurphy (1992) to estimate relative demand and supply for skills as well as wage rigidity in Germany. Using three data sets for Germany, two for Britain and one for the United States, I simulate the change in relative wage rigidity (wage compression) in all three countries during the early and mid 1990s, this being the period when unemployment increased in ...

Transatlantic Differences in Labour Markets: Changes in Wage and Non-Employment Structures in the 1980s and the 1990s

Rising wage inequality in the United States and Britain and rising continental European unemployment have led to a popular view in the economics profession that these two phenomena are related to negative relative demand shocks against the unskilled, combined with flexible wages in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but wage rigidities in continental Europe (‘Krugman hypothesis’). This paper tests this hypothesis ...

Switch-On and Switch-Off Effects of Sick Pay Reform on Absence from Work and on Health-Related Outcomes

We evaluate the switch-on and switch-off effects of a natural experiment that reduced sick pay in Germany from 100 to 80% of the wage rate but that effectively only applied to workers without a collective bargaining agreement. Two years following implementation of the reform, a newly elected federal government repealed it. We estimate the reform’s impact on annual days of absence by applying a difference-in-differences ...

The Effects of a Sick Pay Reform on Absence and on Health-Related Outcomes

We evaluate the effects of a reduction in sick pay from 100 to 80% of the wage. Unlike previous literature, apart from absence from work, we also consider effects on doctor/hospital visits and subjective health indicators. We also add to the literature by estimating both switch-on and switch-off effects, because the reform was repealed two years later. We find a two-day reduction in the number of days ...