Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Reference-Dependent Effects of Unemployment on Mental Well-Being

This paper provides an empirical analysis of reference-dependent effects of unemployment on mental well-being. We show that the negative effect of unemployment on mental well-being depends on expectations about the future employment status. Several contributions to the literature have shown that the perception of the individual employment status depends on the surrounding unemployment rate. We argue ...

Public and Private Health Insurance in Germany: The Ignored Risk Selection Problem

While risk selection within the German public health insurance system has received considerable attention, risk selection between public and private health insurers has largely been ignored. This is surprising since - given the institutional structure - risk selection between systems is likely to be more pronounced. We find clear evidence for risk selection in favor of private insurers. While private ...

Making it right? Social norms, handwriting and human capital

I study the forced right-hand writing of left-handed children (switching) as a case where social norms motivate parents to invest in their children. While the previous literature has found that left-handers obtain less human capital and lower wages than right-handers, due to innate cognitive deficits, I find that switched lefthanders actually perform equally well or even better than right-handers in ...

Social Capital as Good Culture (Alfred Marshall Lecture)

To explain the extremely long-term persistence (more than 500 years) of positive historical experiences of cooperation (Putnam 1993), we model the intergenerational transmission of priors about the trustworthiness of others. We show that this transmission tends to be biased toward excessively conservative priors. As a result, societies can be trapped in a low-trust equilibrium. In this context, a temporary ...

The Impact of Minimum Wages on Well-Being: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Germany

We analyze well-being effects of minimum wages, using the introduction of the minimum wage in Germany as a quasi-experiment. Based on representative data, a difference-in-differences design compares the development of life, job, and pay satisfaction between employees who are affected by the reform according to their pre-intervention wages and those who have marginally higher wages at outset. We find ...

Assimilation and Cohort Effects for German Immigrants

What Determines the Duration of Stay of Immigrants in Germany? Evidence from a Longitudinal Duration Analysis

Purpose: – Because of the increasing importance of immigration for Germany due to the ageing population and the lack of highly skilled in some industries, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the return‐migration of German immigrants. Design/methodology/approach: – The paper uses the German Socio‐economic Panel to conduct an event‐history analysis of return‐migration. Findings: – The analysis reveals ...

Beyond Generalised Trust: Norms of Reciprocity as an Alternative Form of Social Capital in an Assimilationist Integration Regime

Scholars have recently stressed two important avenues for the study of cultural diversity and social capital: the role of political integration regimes as well as alternative indicators to generalised trust. This article addresses both. Focusing on Germany, it provides the first study of the relationship between cultural diversity and social capital in a country implementing an ‘assimilationist’ model ...

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