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Survey Response Behavior as a Proxy for Unobserved Ability: Theory and Evidence

An emerging literature is experimenting with using survey response behavior as a proxy for hard-to-measure abilities. We contribute to this literature by formalizing this idea and evaluating its benefits and risks. Using a standard and nationally representative survey from Australia, we demonstrate that the survey item-response rate (SIRR), a straightforward summary measure of response behavior, varies ...

Three Microeconomic Applications Using Administrative Records

This dissertation provides three examples of how using naturally occurring datasets, data collected independent of the consideration of researchers, can answer important research questions. These types of data are called “administrative records” or “organic data” and include sources as diverse as W2 tax filings, stock prices, and Google searches (see Groves, 2011). In the first example, The Dog that ...

The Dog that Didn't Bark: What Item Nonresponse Shows about Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Ability

What survey respondents choose not to answer (item nonresponse) provides a useful task based measure of cognitive ability (e.g., IQ) and non-cognitive ability (e.g., Conscientiousness). Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), we find consistent correlation between item nonresponse and traditional measures of IQ and Conscientiousness. ...

The Effect of Rapid Structural Change on Workers

This paper deals with the question how workers’ labour market and non-monetary outcomes are impacted by a negative sector-specific labour demand shock. This issue is analysed in a setting of rapid structural change that happened in Eastern Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The sector-specific labour demand shock can be assumed to be exogenous to other worker characteristics as it was ...

Perceived pollution and selective out-migration: revisiting the role of income for environmental inequality

The disproportionate exposure of minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged households to environmental pollution is often explained by selective migration or sorting mechanisms. Yet, previous empirical results remain inconclusive. Here, we offer an explanation for the mixed findings by focusing on the selective out-migration stage triggered by environmental pollution. We argue that many income-independent ...

Optimal minimum wages

We develop a quantitative spatial model with heterogeneous firms and a monopsonistic labour market to derive minimum wages that maximize employment or welfare. Quantifying the model for German micro regions, we find that the German minimum wage, set at 48% of the national mean wage, has increased aggregate worker welfare by about 2.1% at the cost or reducing employment by about 0.3%. The welfare-maximizing ...

SOEP-Core v36 – The Couple History Files BIOCOUPLM and BIOCOUPLY, and Marital History Files BIOMARSM and BIOMARSY

SOEP-Core v37 – Codebook for the $PEQUIV File 1984-2020: CNEF Variables with Extended Income Information for the SOEP

SOEP-Core v36: Codebook for the EU-SILC-like panel for Germany based on the SOEP

SOEP-Core – 2019: Sampling, Nonresponse, and Weighting in the Sample P