External refereed essays

The Early Bird Gets the Germs? The Impact of Early Daycare Attendance on Children’s Health

In recent decades, the share of very young children in daycare has significantly increased in many OECD countries, including Germany. Despite the critical role of child health in development and later life success, the impact of early daycare attendance on health has received little attention in the economic literature. This study examines the effects of a substantial daycare expansion in Germany on ...

Split Between Accelerationists, Pivoters, and the Unwavering: CEE Energy Policy Responses to Russia’s 2022 Invasion

Dynamic Networks of Social Contact, Social Desire, and Affect Across Time Scales

Social relationships are central to well-being because they fulfill social affiliation needs. To explain how social needs are regulated, theories describe daily-life processes among social desire, social contact, and affect. Still, these processes remain empirically underexplored because of their complexity. In this study, we estimated multivariate associations of social desire and affect with social ...

Basic Social Justice Orientations: Measuring Order-Related Justice in the European Social Survey Round 9

Individuals hold normative ideas about the just distribution of goods and burdens within a social aggregate. These normative ideas guide the evaluation of existing inequalities and refer to four basic principles: (1) Equality stands for an equal distribution of rewards and burdens. While the principle of (2) need takes individual contributions into account, (3) equity suggests a distribution based ...

The Generational Gift: The Effects of Grandparental Care on the Next Generations' Health and Well‐Being

Health and well‐being in the family context can be affected by care giving arrangements. Following parental care and daycare, grandparents are the third most important care givers for children in many Western societies. Despite the relevance of grandparental care, there is little evidence on the causal effects of this care mode on the next generations' health and well‐being. In this paper, we fill ...

Baseload Power Plants Are Not Essential for Future Power Systems

The transition to decarbonized energy systems has fueled a controversial debate over the necessity of traditional ‘‘baseload’’ power. Skepticism remains regarding the reliability and economic feasibility of power systems relying mainly on cheap variable renewable energy (VRE) sources. Addressing this, the German Academies’ project ‘‘Energy Systems of the Future’’ (ESYS) analyzed the role of baseload ...

Child Penalties in Labour Market Skills

This paper estimates child penalties in labour-market-relevant cognitive skills, such as numeracy but also literacy and problem-solving competencies. We use international PIAAC data and adapt a pseudo-panel approach to a single cross-section covering 29 countries. Numeracy scores, which are associated with the largest returns to skills and pronounced gender differences, decline by 0.11 standard deviations ...

A Typology of Younger Adults' Nuclear and Extende Family Relations in the United States

Objective: To develop a typology of relationship quality for nuclear and extended family relations of younger adults in the United States, accounting for variation across kinship types and racial/ethnic groups. Background: Existing typologies of family relationships primarily focus on nuclear ties, often neglecting relations with extended kin. Ties to extended kin are, however, central to many people's ...

Generationengerechtigkeit in der Klimapolitik

Generationengerechtigkeit ist zu einem zentralen Leitprinzip der Klimapolitik geworden. Sie verbindet normative, rechtliche und ökonomische Perspektiven zu einer fairen Verteilung von Freiheitsräumen, Lasten und Chancen zwischen heutigen und zukünftigen Generationen. Generationengerechtigkeit ist dabei kein moralisches Postulat, sondern ein verfassungsrechtlich verankertes und ökonomisch begründetes ...

Linking Social Media News Use, AI Interest, and Political Ideology With AI Subjective Knowledge: A Moderated Mediation Model Across Two Countries

Social media has emerged as a pivotal platform for accessing news content today. While there appears to be a connection between news consumption on social media platforms and perceived knowledge of public affairs, little is known about the potential effect on specific issues like artificial intelligence (AI). To extend findings on people’s perceived knowledge of AI, how it relates to social media news ...

Age and Gender Differences in Narcissism: A Comprehensive Study Across Eight Measures and over 250,000 Participants

Age and gender differences in narcissism have been studied often. However, considering the rich history of narcissism research accompanied by its diverging conceptualizations, little is known about age and gender differences across various narcissism measures. The present study investigated age and gender differences and their interactions across eight widely used narcissism instruments (i.e., Narcissistic ...

The Dynamics of Recent Refugees’ Language Acquisition: How Do Their Pathways Compare to Those of Other New Immigrants?

Do the processes underlying destination-language acquisition differ between recently arrived refugees and other new immigrants? Based on a well-established model of language learning according to which language fluency is a function of efficiency, incentives, and exposure, this study addresses general processes of language learning as well as conditions specific to refugees. Longitudinal data on refugees ...

Response Quality in Nonprobability and Probability-based Online Panels

Recent years have seen a growing number of studies investigating the accuracy of nonprobability online panels; however, response quality in nonprobability online panels has not yet received much attention. To fill this gap, we investigate response quality in a comprehensive study of seven nonprobability online panels and three probability-based online panels with identical fieldwork periods and questionnaires ...

Binary Response Format or 11-Point Scale? Measuring Justice Evaluations of Earnings in the SOEP

Questions on justice of earnings are regularly fielded in large-scale surveys but insights intothe role of response formats on measures of the justice of earnings are missing. This problem isillustrated by the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), which, in 2017, changed its question onthe justice of one’s own earnings from a binary response scale to an 11-point scale. Meanwhile, the shareof respondents ...

Associations of Socioeconomic Disparities with Buccal Dna-Methylation Measures of Biological Aging

Background: Individuals who are socioeconomically disadvantaged are at increased risk for aging-related diseases and perform less well on tests of cognitive function. The weathering hypothesis proposes that these disparities in physical and cognitive health arise from an acceleration of biological processes of aging. Theories of how life adversity is biologically embedded identify epigenetic alterations, ...

Personality in the Classroom: Interactions of Parental SES and Students’ Big Five in Predicting School Performance

While socioeconomic status (SES) and personality have both been identified as relevant predictors of academic achievement, little is known about their possible interplay in predicting school performance. The present study used the latent moderated structural equations (LMS) method to investigate latent interactions between familial SES and parent-rated Big Five in a sample of German high school students ...

The Gender Gap in Fair Earnings: The Effect of Male and Female Supervisors

Research has consistently shown that lower earnings for women and higher earnings for men are generally regarded as fair by both women and men. Previous research has focused on structural factors to explain this phenomenon, but has neglected proximate relationships at work. This study examines how the supervisors’ gender relates to employees’ justice attitudes toward the earnings of men and women. ...

The Gender Gap in Fair Earnings: The Effect of Male and Female Supervisors

Research has consistently shown that lower earnings for women and higher earnings for men are generally regarded as fair by both women and men. Previous research has focused on structural factors to explain this phenomenon, but has neglected proximate relationships at work. This study examines how the supervisors’ gender relates to employees’ justice attitudes toward the earnings of men and women. ...

Fairness of Earnings in Europe: The Consequences of Unfair Under- And Overreward for Life Satisfaction

A large percentage of workers in Europe perceive their earnings to be unfairly low. Such perceptions of unfairness can have far-reaching consequences, ranging from low satisfaction to poor health. To gain insight into the conditions that can attenuate or amplify these adverse consequences, comparative research on the role of country contexts in shaping responses to perceived unfairness is needed. Furthermore, ...

One‐Way Versus Two‐Way Postacquisition Integration Efforts: Theory and Evidence

We develop a theory of postacquisition integration that distinguishes between one-way (acquirer-only) and two-way (mutual) effort strategies. We argue that the method of payment—cash versus shares—may serve as an ex ante commitment mechanism to a particular integration strategy, where cash deals align with unilateral effort, and share deals induce mutual engagement. Using transaction-level mergers ...