Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Regional Dynamics of European Electoral Politics: Participation in National and European Contests in the 1990s

Subnational Analyses Using the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Data Archive

Comparing Government Redistribution across Countries: The Problem of Second-order Effects

The traditional way of measuring government redistribution across countries is to compare the income households report that they receive from private sources with the income they receive after government transfers have been added and taxes and social insurance contributions deducted. Unfortunately, this conventional measure does not capture “second order” effects whereby income guarantees arising from ...

The Conditional Effects of Income Inequality on Extreme Right Wing Votes: A Subnational Analysis of Western Europe in the 1990's

Collateral damage: The German food crisis, educational attainment and labor market outcomes of German post-war cohorts

Using the German 1970 census to study educational and labor market outcomes of cohorts born during the German food crisis after World War II, I document that those born between November 1945 and May 1946 have significantly lower educational attainment and occupational status than cohorts born shortly before or after. Several alternative explanations for this finding are tested. Most likely, a short ...

Financial incentives, timing of births, and infant health: a closer look into the delivery room

As a result of strong financial incentives created by the German parental leave reform on January 1, 2007, some 1000 births have been shifted from the last days of 2006 to the first days of 2007, especially by working mothers. This fact is already described in the literature, yet there is no evidence as to the mechanisms and only scarce evidence regarding the effects on newborn health. I use new data ...

Does Schooling Affect Health Behavior? Evidence from the Educational Expansion in Western Germany

During the postwar period German states pursued policies to increase the share of young Germans obtaining a university entrance diploma (Abitur) by building more academic track schools, but the timing of educational expansion differed between states. This creates exogenous variation in the availability of higher education, which allows estimating the causal effect of education on health behaviors. ...

Essays on variable risk attitudes

Do Firms Obey the Law When They Fire Workers? Social Criteria and Severance Payments in Germany

Purpose – Employment protection legislation defines social criteria according to which firms can dismiss workers. If firms evade the law, then negotiation about compensation begins. To reduce the legal and financial uncertainty often associated with ex post bargaining, the German government stipulate severance payments in the case of mutual agreements in law in 2004. This paper aims to examine whether ...

Don’t worry, be flexible? Job satisfaction among flexible workers

This paper investigates whether workers in flexible employment relationships show lower job satisfaction than workers with permanent job contracts. Our results show that looking only at the formal job security provided by the contract may lead to misleading conclusions about job satisfaction. We find, using longitudinal data for Germany, that it is not the formal job security provided by the contractual ...