Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Labor Market Effects of the German Tax Reform 2000

Making Work Pay for the Elderly Unemployed - Evaluating Alternative Policy Reforms for Germany

Intertemporal Labor Supply and Involuntary Unemployment

We estimate a model of intertemporal male labor supply behavior which explicitly accounts for the effect of income taxation and the transfer system. Moreover, we model the demand-side driven rationing risk that prevents agents from choosing the optimal labor supply state. Our results show that elasticities derived in an unconstrained pure choice model are significantly higher compared to a model with ...

Optimal Taxation: The Design of Child Related Cash- and In-Kind-Benefits

This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Based on the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometric techniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfer system for single women optimal. Furthermore, we compare the welfare function conditional on the presence and age of children and asses ...

Can Child Care Policy Encourage Employment and Fertility? Evidence from a Structural Model

We develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between these two outcomes. To identify the effect of financial incentives on employment and fertility we exploit variation in the tax and transfer system, which differs by employment state and number of children. Specifically, we simulate in detail the effects of the tax and transfer ...

Naturalisation and Investments in Children's Human Capital: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

This paper assesses educational attainment of immigrant children, in particular evaluating whether naturalised parents invest more in their children's human capital than non-naturalised parents. Findings of the literature indicate that citizenship is associated with lower return migration probability. Since the returns to investments in (country-specific) human capital increase with the duration ...

Naturalisation and on-the-job training: evidence from first-generation immigrants in Germany

This paper empirically analyses the effect of naturalisation on on-the-job training (OJT) participation among first-generation immigrants in Germany. OJT is associated with improved labour market outcomes and provides therefore an indicator for labour market integration. Naturalisation is assumed to act as a signal of the employee’s commitment to the host country and may thus increase employers’ likelihood ...

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 ...