Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

The Role of Prices Relative to Supplemental Benefits and Service Quality in Health Plan Choice

This article links representative enrollee panel data to health plan data on (1) prices, (2) service quality, and (3) nonessential benefits for the German statutory multipayer market and the years 2007–2010. We first show that although heavy federal regulation ensures a simple choice architecture, the majority of health plans are dominated—even when considering four nonprice attributes. Enrollees in ...

Who Opts Out of the Statutory Health Insurance? A Discrete Time Hazard Model for Germany

The coexistence of social health insurance and private health insurance in Germany is subject to intense public debate. As only few have the opportunity to choose between the two systems, they are often regarded as privileged by the health insurance system. Applying a hazard model in discrete time, this paper examines the role of incentives set by the regulatory framework as well as the influence of ...

Minimum wage not yet for everyone: on the compensation of eligible workers before and after the minimum wage reform from the perspective of employees

Calculations based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) show that after the introduction of a statutory minimum wage in Germany in January 2015, the wage growth of eligible employees with low wages accelerated significantly. Before the reform, the nominal growth in contractual hourly wages in the lowest decile, the bottom tenth of the pay distribution, was less than two percent in the long-term ...

The Impact of the German Minimum Wage on Individual Wages and Monthly Earnings

This paper evaluates the short-run impact of the introduction of a statutory minimum wage in Germany on the hourly wages and monthly earnings of workers targeted by the reform. We first provide detailed descriptive evidence of changes to the wage structure in particular at the bottom of the distribution and distinguish between trends for regularly employed and marginally employed workers. In the causal ...

The Economic Impact of Social Ties: Evidence from German Reunification

We use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to show that personal relationships which individuals maintain for noneconomic reasons can be an important determinant of regional economic growth. We show that West German households who had social ties to East Germany in 1989 experienced a persistent rise in their personal incomes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, the presence of these households ...

Some New Insights on the Interindustry Wage Structure from the Socioeconomic Panel

This paper investigates the interindustry wage structure in the 1985 wave of the German Socioeconomic Panel. In addition to the usual controls, this survey contains detailed information on job characteristics and work conditions. Interaction of industry affiliation is significant with several individual attributes, especially job tenure; homogeneity of earnings equations across these attributes is ...

The Determinants of East-West German Migration: Some First Results

Estimating wage losses of displaced workers in Germany

Getting behind the East-West Wage Differential - Theory and Evidence

No Role for the Hartz Reforms? Demand and Supply Factors in the German Labor Market, 1993-2014

The supply and demand framework of Katz and Murphy (1992) provides new evidence on the source of changes in socially insured full-time and part-time employment in years preceding and following the implementation of the landmark Hartz reforms in Germany. Our findings are consistent with a stable demand for labor, especially in western Germany, implying that supply factors were decisive for the evolution ...