Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Sons, daughters, wives, and the labour market outcomes of West German men

Explaining Import Variety and Quality: The Role of the Income Distribution

In this paper we examine whether a generalized version of Flam and Helpman’s (1987) model of vertical differentiation can reconcile three facts. One, countries import only a subset of available varieties. Two, import prices vary across exporters within narrow product categories. Three, US growth in both import variety and import price dispersion has occurred at the same time that the US income distribution ...

Earnings Inequality in Europe: Structure and Patterns of Inter-Temporal Changes

The Determinants of Reservation Wages in Germany: Does a Motivation Gap Exist?

This paper investigates the reservation wages of unemployed persons on the basis of a job-search model with non-static reservation wages using panel data from Germany from 1987 to 1998. The results suggest that reservation wages are relatively high in Germany compared to other countries. Furthermore, pooled regression results show that most recent wages and personal characteristics of the unemployed ...

Reservation Wages, Offered Wages, and Unemployment Duration - New Empirical Evidence

No Benefits of Seeing a Dark Future? A Note on Recent Findings on the Effects of Forecasting Life Satisfaction

In the recent article (Lang et al., 2013), the authors explore functional outcomes of life satisfaction with regard to hazards of mortality using the adult life span sample of the national German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). The results suggest that “being overly optimistic predicting a better future than actually observed was associated with […] a great risk of mortality within the following decade”. ...

Part-Time Work in EU Countries: Labour Market Mobility, Entry and Exit

How Care Work Employment Shapes Earnings in a Cross-National Perspective

The Motherhood Penalty in Cross-National Perspective: The Importance of Work-Family Policies and Cultural Attitudes

Mothers’ employment and earnings partly depend on social policies and cultural norms supporting work-family balance. While policies regarding parental leave and childcare may assist families in combining work and care, are these policies related to the economic penalties for motherhood? Using original social policy data with micro data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we examine relationships between ...

Are Relative-Income Effects Constant across the Well-being Distribution?

This paper challenges the common assumption made by economists to date that income comparisons are similarly important in different segments of the subjective well-being (SWB) distribution. The results, based on the 2000-2007 waves of the German SOEP and on a Generalized Ordered Probit for panel data, show that relative income, as measured either by the mean income of the reference group or the individual ...