Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Revisiting the German Wage Structure

This paper shows that wage inequality in West Germany has increased over the past three decades, contrary to common perceptions. During the 1980s, the increase was concentrated at the top of the distribution; in the 1990s, it occurred at the bottom end as well. Our findings are consistent with the view that both in Germany and in the United States, technological change is responsible for the widening ...

Remittances and Temporary Migration

Savings, Asset Holdings, and Temporary Migration

This paper analyzes savings and asset holdings of immigrants in relation to their return plans. We argue that savings and asset accumulation may be affected by return plans of immigrants. Further, the way savings and assets are held in the home- and host country may also be related to future return plans. Thus, comparing savings and assets between immigrants and natives may lead to serious underestimation ...

Wage Growth and Job Mobility in the United Kingdom and Germany

The Long-term Effects of School Quality on Labor Market Outcomes and Educational Attainment

We study the long-term causal effects of attending a "better" school - defined as one with more advanced peers, more highly paid teachers, and a more academic curriculum - on the highest degree completed, wages, occupational choice, and unemployment. We base our analysis on a regression discontinuity design, generated by a school entry age rule, that assigns students to different types of ...

The Long-Term Effects of Early Track Choice

We investigate the effects of attending a more advanced track in middle school on long-term education and labour market outcomes for Germany, a country with a rigorous early-age tracking system, where the risk of misallocating students is particularly high. Our research design exploits quasi-random shifts between tracks induced by date of birth, and speaks to the long-term effects of early track attendance ...

Selection Correction in Panel Data Models: An Application to the Estimation of Females' Wage Equations

In recent years a number of panel estimators have been suggested for sample selection models, where both the selection equation and the equation of interest contain individual effects which are correlated with the explanatory variables. Not many studies exist that use these methods in practise. We present and compare alternative estimators, and apply them to a typical problem in applied econometrics: ...

The Wage Performance of Immigrant Women: Full-Time Jobs, Part-Time Jobs, and the Role of Selection

Expansions in Maternity Leave Coverage and Children’s Long-Term Outcomes

This paper evaluates the impact of three major expansions in maternity leave coverage in Germany on children's long-run outcomes. To identify the causal impact of the reforms, we use a difference-indifference design that compares outcomes of children born shortly before and shortly after a change in maternity leave legislation in years of policy changes, and in years when no changes have taken ...

Essays on Skills, Health and Human Inequality (Dissertation)