Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Longitudinal bidirectional associations between personality and becoming a leader

Objective: Leaders differ in their personalities from non-leaders. However, when do these differences emerge? Are leaders “born to be leaders” or does their personality change in preparation for a leadership role and due to increasing leadership experience? Method: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we examined personality differences between leaders (N = 2683 leaders, women: n ...

An Econometric Analysis of Environmental Phenomena

Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit den Auswirkungen von Luftverschmutzung und Naturkatastrophen auf verschiedene Aspekte der menschlichen Umwelt. Im ersten Abschnitt konzentriere ich mich auf die Luftverschmutzung. Konkret stelle ich in Kapitel 2 fest: Die stündlichen Veränderungen der Luftverschmutzung wirken sich über zwei verschiedene Wege auf die Kriminalität aus, und zwar über physiologische ...

Social Contacts of Refugees

No Evidence That Siblings' Gender Affects Personality across Nine Countries

Does growing up with a sister rather than a brother affect personality? In this article, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of siblings’ gender on adults’ personality, using data from 85,887 people from 12 large representative surveys covering nine countries (United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China, and Indonesia). We investigated ...

Information Frictions among Firms and Households

We survey samples of German firms and households to document novel stylized facts about the extent of information frictions among the two groups. First, firms' expectations about macroeconomic variables are closer to expert forecasts and less dispersed than households', consistent with higher information frictions among households. Second, the degree of dispersion and the distance from expert ...

Managers' Risk Preferences and Firm Training Investments

We provide the first estimates of the impact of managers' risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. Our conceptual framework links managers' risk preferences to firms' training decisions through the bonuses they expect to receive. Risk-averse managers are expected to select workers with low turnover risk and invest in specific rather than general training. Empirical evidence ...

Myths and Facts About Inequality

Which Decision Theory Describes Life Satisfaction Best? Evidence from Annual Panel Data

We use an annual household panel to test which features of prospect theory can be supported by measures of life satisfaction. We also test whether recalled or expected life satisfaction is anchored at current life satisfaction and adjusted in the direction of the recall or expectation. Using a fixed effects estimator we find that life satisfaction contains features of both classic expected utility ...

Impact of Inequality-Related Media Coverage on the Concerns of the Citizens

Income distribution and inequality play a central role in the public and political debate in many developed and democratic countries. An increasing literature on (mis)perception of the distribution of income reveals that people have very little knowledge about the degree of inequality in the society and its development over time. The jury is still out on what actually drives the perception of inequality ...

Does the Mortality of Individuals with Severe Disabilities Contribute to the Persistent East–West Mortality Gap Among German Men?

After three decades since reunification male life expectancy in East Germany still lags behind that of West Germany. Unlike most of the prior studies focusing on the role of socioeconomic factors, this study aims at assessing the contribution of the population with severe disabilities to the persistent East–West male mortality gap. Our analysis is mainly based on the German Pension Fund data. It is ...