External refereed essays

Sampling in Times of High Immigration: The Survey Process of the IAB-BAMF-SOEP Survey of Refugees

Over the course of 2013 to 2016, over one million asylum seekers arrived in Germany, around 890,000 of them in 2015 alone. The growing refugee population posed a major challenge for Germany’s policy makers, civic administrators, and society at large, in finding new approaches to registration procedures, housing, and social and economic integration. To design policies and programs that meet these needs, ...

Health-Related Life Cycle Risks and Public Insurance

Based on a dynamic life cycle model, this study analyzes health-related risks of consumption and old-age poverty. The model allows for health effects on employment risks, on productivity, on longevity, the correlation between health risks, productivity and preferences, and the financial incentives of the German public insurance schemes. The estimation uses data on male employees and an extended expectation-maximization ...

European Electricity Sector Decarbonization under Different Levels of Foresight

The European Union has set out to reduce the carbon intensity of its electricity generation substantially, as defined in the European Roadmap 2050. This paper analyses the impact of foresight towards decarbonization targets on the investment decisions in the European electricity sector using a specific model developed by the authors called dynELMOD. Incorporating the climate targets makes the investment ...

Economic Aspects of Subjective Attitudes towards the German Minimum-Wage Reform

Despite skepticism among experts about the effects of a minimum wage, there is remarkably widespread public support for such policies. Using representative survey data from 2015 and 2016, we investigate the subjective attitudes driving public support for Germany's minimum-wage reform. We find that socioeconomic characteristics and political orientations explain a minor part of the variation in attitudes, ...

Die frühe Bildung und Betreuung in Deutschland: Familien- und Bildungspolitik oder beides?

Die öffentlich finanzierte Kindertagesbetreuung ist zu einem elementaren Bestandteil des kindlichen Aufwachsens in Deutschland geworden – sowohl aus einer Perspektive der Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf als auch der frühen Förderung von Kindern. Sie bewegt sich damit im Spannungsfeld zwischen Familien- und Bildungspolitik. Mit diesem Spannungsfeld befasst sich dieser Beitrag und plädiert letztlich ...

Punishing Potential Mothers? Evidence for Statistical Employer Discrimination from a Natural Experiment

Before 2006, large firms in Germany were obliged to pay for the generous maternity protection of female employees, such that firms’ expected costs depended on employees’ gender and age. From 2006 onward, all firms paid for maternity protection by contributing to the statutory health insurance system, where the contribution depends only on the number of employees and their wages and is thus independent ...

Infrastrukturinvestitionen statt Subventionen

Die Infrastrukturinvestitionen nehmen seit Jahren ab. Insbesondere die Gemeinden haben drastisch weniger investiert, nicht wegen eines geringeren Bedarfs, sondern wegen erheblicher Finanzprobleme in der Vergangenheit. Über den langen Zeitraum sind auch Planungs- und Genehmigungskapazitäten verloren gegangen. Entscheidend dafür, dass die Kommunen ihre Investitionstätigkeit wieder aufnehmen können, ist ...

Germany and Climate Protection: From Model Pupil to Laggard: Why Coal Phasing out Makes Economic and Ecological Sense

Germany has gone from being a pioneer to a laggard when it comes to climate protection. The proportion of Germany's most polluting energy source, lignite, is higher than ever before. Renewable energies are being thwarted. There is no sustainable transport policy that focuses on traffic avoidance, relocation, and electrification as well as environmental, climate, and health protection—not even after ...

Sexual Activity, Sexual Thoughts, and Intimacy among Older Adults: Links with Physical Health and Psychosocial Resources for Successful Aging

Research on close relationships in later life has received increased attention over the past decade. However, little is known about sexuality and intimacy in old age. Using cross-sectional data from the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II; Mage = 68 years, SD = 3.68; 50% women; N = 1,514), we examine age differences in behavioral (sexual activity), cognitive (sexual thoughts), and emotional (intimacy) facets ...

Rigging Economics

Advances in horizontal drilling have significantly increased US oil and gas production, but it is not clear whether the industry is viable if oil prices continue to be low. Researchers now estimate the break-even price for oil and gas from tight formations and analyse the factors that affect investment in drilling rigs.

The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Using the Dirichlet Process to Form Clusters of People’s Concerns in the Context of Future Party Identification

Connections between interindividual differences and people’s behavior has been widely researched in various contexts, often by using top-down group comparisons to explain interindividual differences. In contrast, in this study, we apply a bottom-up approach in which we identify meaningful clusters in people’s concerns about various areas of life (e.g., their own health, their financial situation, the ...

Flexible Electricity Generation, Grid Exchange and Storage for the Transition to a 100% Renewable Energy System in Europe

Two transition pathways towards a 100% renewable energy (RE) power sector by 2050 are simulated for Europe using the LUT Energy System Transition model. The first is a Regions scenario, whereby regions are modelled independently, and the second is an Area scenario, which has transmission interconnections between regions. Modelling is performed in hourly resolution for 5-year time intervals, from 2015 ...

Dimensions of Social Stratification and Their Relation to Mortality: A Comparison across Gender and Life Course Periods in Finland

Differences in mortality between groups with different socioeconomic positions (SEP) are well-established, but the relative contribution of different SEP measures is unclear. This study compares the correlation between three SEP dimensions and mortality, and investigates differences between gender and age groups (35–59 vs. 60–84). We use an 11% random sample with an 80% oversample of deaths from the ...

Simulating the Potential of Swarm Grids for Pre-Electrified Communities: A Case Study from Yemen

Swarm grids are an emerging approach to electrification in the Global South that interconnects individual household generation and storage to a small electricity network to make full use of existing generation capacities. Using a simulation tool for demand, weather, and power flows, we analyse the potential of an AC swarm grid for a large pre-electrified village in rural Yemen. Service quality and ...

The Peer Composition of Pre-School Settings in England and Early Recorded Attainment among Low-Income Children

Evidence suggests that early education can promote children’s development and narrow attainment gaps between those from lower-income and higher-income families. However, realisation of these potential benefits depends on many factors, feasibly including peer composition. We use national census data for a year-group cohort of children in England in 2011, to answer two questions: how are low-income children ...

Changes in Occupational Tasks and Their Association with Individual Wages and Occupational Mobility

This study provides novel evidence on the relevance of task content changes between and within occupations to wage dynamics of occupational changers and stayers. I use individual‐level, cross‐sectional data featuring tasks performed on the job to compute a measure of proximity of job contents. Then, I merge this measure to a large‐scale panel survey to show that occupational changers experience a wage ...

Job Matching in Connected Regional and Occupational Labour Markets

Job mobility equilibrates disparities in local labour markets and influences the job-matching efficiency. We specify a matching function with regional, occupational and combined regional–occupational spillovers of unemployed and vacancies. To construct these spillovers, we use information on regional proximities and occupational similarities. Based on novel German data on new hires, the unemployed ...

A Head-to-Head Comparison of Augmented Wealth in Germany and the United States

We examine the composition of augmented household wealth, the sum of net worth and pension wealth, in the United States and Germany. Pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth of about 48% in the United States and 61% in Germany. When pension wealth is included in household wealth, the Gini coefficient falls from 0.889 to 0.700 in the United States and from 0.755 to 0.508 in ...

Dynastic Inequality Compared: Multigenerational Mobility in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany

Using harmonized household survey data, we analyze long‐run social mobility in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and test recent theories of multigenerational persistence of socioeconomic status. In this country comparison setting, we find evidence against a universal law of social mobility. Our results show that the long‐run persistence of socioeconomic status and the validity of ...