Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Empirical Studies of Unemployment: Search Behavior, Reintegration and Prevention (Dissertation)

This dissertation studies the search behavior and future labor market outcomes of the unemployed as well as ways to prevent unemployment, and includes the following questions: How do reservation wages of the unemployed evolve over migrant generations? Do economic preferences play a role when analyzing the reemployment probability of unemployed natives and second generation migrants? Does subjective ...

Happiness and Work

The relationship between happiness and work is subject to an ever growing empirical literature in economics. The analyses are mostly based on large-scale survey data to measure subjective well-being. Whereas one large strand of research investigates the effect of job loss and becoming unemployed, another field of study focuses on the determinants of job satisfaction evolving around employment conditions, ...

Kick It Like Özil? Decomposing the Native-Migrant Education Gap

We investigate second-generation migrants and native children at several stages in the German education system to analyze the determinants of the persistent native–migrant gap. In particular, if migrant and native children shared the same socioeconomic family background, would we still observe differences in education outcomes? Applying linear and matching decomposition methods to carefully account ...

Does Cultural Heritage affect Employment decisions? - Empirical Evidence for First- and Second-Generation Immigrants in Germany

An Economic Analysis of Marital Dissolution in West-Germany

(Why) are immigrants unhappy?

Recent studies suggest that migrants may be less satisfied with their ‘new’ lives than members of the host population and worry that this may be driven by cultural factors, such as feelings of not belonging. Motivated by this concern, this paper analyses the life satisfaction of immigrants once settled in the host country. We rely on the German Socio-Economic Panel’s immigrant sample for the years ...

An Empirical Note on Religiosity and Social Trust using German Survey Data

In this empirical research note, we use a large scale German household survey data set to analyze the correlation between religiosity and social trust. Religiosity takes into account religious affiliations (Catholic, Protestant, other Christian, Muslim/Islam, other religions, none) and the frequency of church attendance. In order to measure social trust, we use three outcome variables (willingness ...

Reservation Wages and the Wage Flexibility Puzzle

Wages are only mildly cyclical, implying that shocks to labour demand have a larger short-run impact on unemployment rather than wages, at odds with the quantitative predictions of the canonical search model – even if wages are only occasionally renegotiated. We argue that one source of the wage flexibility puzzles is plausibly the model for the determination of reservation wages, and consider an alternative ...

Home Ownership and Monetary Policy Transmission

We present empirical evidence on the heterogeneity in monetary policy transmission across countries with different home ownership rates. We use household-level data together with shocks to the policy rate identified from high-frequency data. We find that housing tenure reacts more strongly to unexpected changes in the policy rate in Germany and Switzerland - the OECD countries with the lowest home ...

A Study of Employment Careers of Immigrants in Germany