Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Life Events and Personality Trait Change

Theory and research have emphasized the impact of life events on personality trait change. In this article, we review prospective research on personality trait change in response to nine major life events in the broader domains of love and work. We expected to find that life events lead to personality trait change to the extent that they have a lasting influence on individuals' thoughts, feelings, ...

Welfare Effects of the Euro Cash Changeover: Do Assumptions Really Matter?

Manski’s partial identification allows less restrictive, therefore, more credible assumptions than the assumption of random treatment assignment to solve the evaluation problem. In this article the theory of partial identification is applied to the welfare effect of the euro cash changeover. When evaluating the impact of the euro cash changeover on individual welfare, Wunder et al. (2008) face the ...

The Two Faces of Fearless Dominance and Their Relations to Vocational Success

We tested Lykken’s (1995) theory that the personality trait of fearless dominance (FD) can result in positive or negative life outcomes depending on whether the socialization process was successful or not. We tested FD’s predictive and moderated relations with vocational success over a time interval of 4 years. We found that the relations between FD and change in income were moderated by level of education. ...

Does Trust Pay Off?

We exploit a data driven latent class model to classify individuals in two distinct trust classes: one for low, and one for high trust individuals. Subsequently, by entering class membership in a two-wave panel analysis we find that belonging to the high trust class positively influences an individual’s economic performance, as measured by individual wage earnings. We show that trust related income ...

The Effect of Motivation on Self-employment Duration in Germany: Necessity versus Opportunity Entrepreneurs

Neccessity and Opportunity Entrepreneurs and their Duration in Self-Employment: Evidence from German Micro Data

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP), we analyze whether necessity entrepreneurs differ from opportunity entrepreneurs in terms of self-employment duration. Using univariate statistics, we find that opportunity entrepreneurs remain in self-employment longer than necessity entrepreneurs. However, after controlling for the entrepreneurs’ education in the professional area where ...

How Do Risk Attitudes Differ within the Group of Entrepreneurs? The Role of Motivation and Procedural Utility

Starting a business involves risk and, thus, requires a risk-taking attitude. The concept of risk and entrepreneurship has been widely discussed in the entrepreneurship literature; most studies compare entrepreneurs with nonentrepreneurs such as managers or bankers. So far, little research exists on the risk attitudes of the different types of entrepreneurs—those who pursue a new business because of ...

Are Education and Entrepreneurial Income Endogenous? A Bayesian Analysis

Education is a well-known driver of (entrepreneurial) income. The measurement of its influence, however, suffers from endogeneity suspicion. For instance, ability and occupational choice are mentioned as driving both the level of (entrepreneurial) income and of education. Using instru-mental variables can provide a way out. However, two questions remain: whether endogeneity is really present and whether ...

Necessity and Opportunity Entrepreneurs: Characteristics and Earnings Differentials

In this paper we discuss necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. We use panel data to analyze how these two types of entrepreneurs differ in general, and in their ability to discover and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. We find that the opportunities exploited by opportunity entrepreneurs are generally more profitable than are those exploited by necessity entrepreneurs. We also find that ...

Opportunity Recognition and Exploitation By Necessity and Opportunity Entrepreneurs: Empirical Evidence from Earnings Equations (mimeo)