External refereed essays

Drivers of Participation Elasticities across Europe: Gender or Earner Role within the Household?

We compute participation tax rates across the EU and find that work disincentives inherent in tax–benefit systems largely depend on household composition and the individual’s earner role within the household. We then estimate participation elasticities using an IV group estimator that enables us to investigate the responsiveness of individuals to work incentives. We contribute to the literature on ...

Subjective Age and Attitudes toward Own Aging across Two Decades of Historical Time

A large body of empirical evidence has accumulated showing that the experience of old age is “younger,” more “agentic,” and “happier” than ever before. However, it is not yet known whether historical improvements in well-being, control beliefs, cognitive functioning, and other outcomes generalize to individuals’ views on their own aging process. To examine historical changes in such views on aging, ...

Coal Transitions - Part 1: A Systematic Map and Review of Case Study Learnings from Regional, National, and Local Coal Phase-Out Experiences

A rapid coal phase-out is needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but is hindered by serious challenges ranging from vested interests to the risks of social disruption. To understand how to organize a global coal phase-out, it is crucial to go beyond cost-effective climate mitigation scenarios and learn from the experience of previous coal transitions. Despite the relevance of the topic, evidence ...

The Role of Different School Organizational Models in the Psychological Adaptation of Refugee Adolescents

Given the high number of refugee children and adolescents around the globe, it is critical to determine conditions that foster their adaptation in the receiving country. This study investigated the psychological adaptation of recently arrived adolescent refugees in Germany. We focused on whether psychological adaptation reflects the organizational approach taken by the school that refugee adolescents ...

Comparison of Local Projection Estimators for Proxy Vector Autoregressions

Different local projection (LP) estimators for structural impulse responses of proxy vector autoregressions are reviewed and compared algebraically and with respect to their small sample suitability for inference. Conditions for numerical equivalence and similarities of some estimators are provided. Two generalized least squares (GLS) projection estimators are found to be more accurate than the other ...

Data on Digital Transformation in the German Socio-Economic Panel

Public debates and current research on “digitalization” suggest that digital technologies could profoundly transform the world of work. While broad claims are common in these debates, empirical evidence remains scarce. This calls for reliable data for empirical research and evidence-based policymaking. We implemented a data module in the Socio-Economic Panel to gather information on digitalization ...

12 Euro Mindestlohn: neue Erwartungen und alte Hürden

The EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy and Its Contribution to Climate Neutrality

The EU Taxonomy is the first standardised and comprehensive classification system for sustainable economic activities. It covers activities responsible for up to 80% of EU greenhouse gas emissions and may play an important role in channelling investments into low-carbon technologies by helping investors to make informed decisions. However, especially in transition sectors much depends on the stringency ...

Migration and Dynamics in Men’s and Women’s Domestic Work

International migration of couples is rising. Still, there is little evidence on men’s and women’s domestic work hours before and after migration. This is despite the fact that domestic work provides deep insights into family life and, for migrants, is directly linked to integration. Therefore, this study examines how immigrant men and women change their domestic work hours following migration, using ...

Financial Literacy and Intra-household Decision Making: Evidence from Rwanda

Research has consistently shown that women’s involvement in household decision making positively affects household outcomes such as nutrition and education of children. Is financial literacy a determinant for women to participate in intra-household decision making? Using data on savings groups in Rwanda, we examine this relationship and show that women with higher financial literacy are more involved ...

The Dynamic Impact of FX Interventions on Financial Markets

Evidence on the effectiveness of foreign exchange (FX) interventions is either limited to short horizons or hampered by debatable identification. We address these limitations by identifying a structural vector autoregressive model for the daily frequency with an external instrument. Generally we find, for freely floating currencies, that FX intervention shocks significantly affect exchange rates and ...

Locus of Control and Investment in Training

We extend standard models of work-related training by explicitly incorporating workers’ locus of control into the investment decision through the returns they expect. Our model predicts that higher internal control results in increased take-up of general, but not specific, training. This prediction is empirically validated using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). We provide empirical ...

Face Mask Use and Physical Distancing before and after Mandatory Masking: No Evidence on Risk Compensation in Public Waiting Lines

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of mandatory face mask usage triggered a heated debate. A major point of controversy is whether community use of masks creates a false sense of security that would diminish physical distancing, counteracting any potential direct benefit from masking. We conducted a randomized field experiment in Berlin, Germany, to investigate how masks affect distancing ...

The Effect of Personalized Feedback on Small Enterprises’ Finances in Uganda

This randomized controlled trial examines the effect of a new finance training style during which participants are given personalized feedback on their financial business outcomes in addition to a rule-of-thumb training approach. We compare this with the effects of a rule-of-thumb training by itself and a control group. Targeting about 500 small entrepreneurs in Uganda, we find that the personalized ...

Differences in African Banking Systems: Causes and Consequences

This paper links banking system development to the colonial and legal history of African countries. Based on a sample of 40 African countries from 2000 to 2018, our empirical findings show a significant dependence of current financial institutions on the inherited legal origin and the colonization type. Findings also reveal that current financial legal institutions are not major determinants of banking ...

Die Erforschung der Dynamik der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland: Survey-Konzepte und eine exemplarische Umsetzung mit dem Sozio-oekonomischen Panel (SOEP)

Die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) hat im Frühjahr 2020 Richtlinien für Bevölkerungsstichproben veröffentlicht, die Basisdaten für gesundheitspolitische Entscheidungen im Pandemiefall liefern können. Diese Richtlinien umzusetzen ist keineswegs trivial. In diesem Beitrag schildern wir die Herausforderungen einer entsprechenden statistischen Erfassung der Corona Pandemie. Hierbei gehen wir im ersten ...

Wealth of Children from Single-Parent Families: Low Levels and High Inequality in Germany

Families’ economic wealth is a resource that can provide children with crucial advantages early in their lives. Prior research identified substantial variation of wealth levels between different family types with children from single-parent families being most disadvantaged. The causes of this disadvantage, how much the disadvantage varies between children and how the non-resident parents’ wealth may ...

The State-Dependent Trading Behavior of Banks in the Oil Futures Market

We study the state-dependent trading behavior of financial institutions in the oil futures market, using structural vector autoregressions with Markov switching in heteroskedasticity. We consider two states of the world: tranquil and turbulent. We decompose the observable time-varying price volatility during the period 2006M6–2016M5 into changes in the slopes of traders’ demand curves and into changes ...

Risky Asset Holdings during Covid-19 and Their Distributional Impact: Evidence from Germany

We present evidence from a repeated survey on risky asset holdings carried out on a representative sample of the German population six times between April and June 2020. Given the size of the Covid-19 shock, we find little evidence of portfolio rebalancing in April 2020. In May, however, individual investors started buying heavily, parallel to market recovery. The cross-section shows large differences ...

Attitudes on Voluntary and Mandatory Vaccination against COVID-19: Evidence from Germany

Several vaccines against COVID-19 have now been developed and are already being rolled out around the world. The decision whether or not to get vaccinated has so far been left to the individual citizens. However, there are good reasons, both in theory as well as in practice, to believe that the willingness to get vaccinated might not be sufficiently high to achieve herd immunity. A policy of mandatory ...