External refereed essays

East Germany: Rising Incomes, Unchanged Inequality and the Impact of Redistributive Government 1990-92

Risk Aversion and Trade-Union Membership

If trade unions provide only their members with insurance against income variations, as a private good, this insurance will provide a stronger incentive for more risk-averse employees to become union members. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and various direct measures of individual risk attitudes, we find robust evidence of a positive relationship between risk aversion and the ...

Credit Reporting, Financial Intermediation and Identification Systems: International Evidence

Credit reporting systems are an important ingredient for financial markets. These systems are based upon the unique identification of borrowers, which is enabled if a compulsory national identification system exists in a country. We present evidence derived from difference-in-difference analyses on the impact of credit reporting and identification systems on financial intermediation in 172 countries ...

A New Approach for Assessing Sleep Duration and Postures from Ambulatory Accelerometry

Interest in the effects of sleeping behavior on health and performance is continuously increasing - both in research and with the general public. Ecologically valid investigations of this research topic necessitate the measurement of sleep within people's natural living contexts. We present evidence that a new approach for ambulatory accelerometry data offers a convenient, reliable, and valid measurement ...

Angst und Ärger: zur Relevanz emotionaler Dimensionen sozialer Ungleichheit

Soziologische Theorien postulieren seit langem Zusammenhänge zwischen sozialer Ungleichheit. - und dem Empfinden von Emotionen. Der Vielfalt theoretischer Arbeiten steht jedoch ein Mangel an empirischen Studien gegenüber, insbesondere mit Blick auf die präzise Erfassung von Emotionen. Aus diesem Grund prüfen wir empirisch die Zusammenhänge zwischen Indikatoren sozialer Ungleichheit und der Häufigkeit ...

Biological Pathways and Genetic Mechanisms Involved in Social Functioning

Purpose: To describe the major findings in the literature regarding associations between biological and genetic factors and social functioning, paying special attention to: (1) heritability studies on social functioning and related concepts; (2) hypothesized biological pathways and genetic variants that could be involved in social functioning, and (3) the implications of these results for quality-of-life ...

Bestimmt die wirtschaftliche Dynamik der Städte die Intensität der Einkommenspolarisierung? Resultate für deutsche Stadtregionen

Optimal Top Marginal Tax Rates under Income Splitting for Couples

This paper provides formulas for optimal top marginal tax rates when couples are taxed according to income splitting between spouses, consumption is taxed, and the skill distribution is unbounded. Optimal top marginal income tax rates are computed for Germany using a dataset that includes the tax returns of all German top taxpayers. We find that the optimal top marginal tax rate converges to about ...

The Parenthood Effect on Gender Inequality: Explaining the Change in Paid and Domestic Work when British Couples Become Parents

This study examines the importance of prenatal characteristics of men and women in couples for how they change their time spent on housework and paid work after thetransition to parenthood. We focus on both partners' earnings and gender role attitudes as explanatory factors. Previous research explored the importance of women's relative income and both partners' gender role attitudes for the extent ...

Gender Equality and Outsourcing of Domestic Work, Childbearing, and Relationship Stability among British Couples

This study investigates whether gender inequality in the division of housework and child care may be an obstacle to childbearing and relationship stability among different groups of British couples. Furthermore, it explores whether outsourcing of domestic labor ameliorates any negative effects of domestic work inequality. The empirical investigation uses event-history analysis based on 14 waves (1992-2005) ...

Maternal Employment and Gender Role Attitudes: Dissonance among British Men and Women in the Transition to Parenthood

This study examines how changes in gender role attitudes of couples after childbirth relate to women's paid work and the type of childcare used. Identifying attitude-practice dissonances matters because how they get resolved influences mothers' future employment. Previous research examined changes in women's attitudes and employment, or spouses' adaptations to each others' attitudes. This is extended ...

Bildungsungleichheiten und Privatschulen in Deutschland

The Determinants of Anti-trafficking Policies: Evidence from a New Index

We develop an index measuring the three main dimensions - prosecution, protection, and prevention - of the anti-trafficking policies of the governments of up to 180 countries over the 2000-2010 period. Overall, developed countries perform better than the rest of the world; compliance with prosecution policy is highest, while governmental efforts to protect victims of human trafficking remain weakest. ...

Integrating Equality: Globalization, Women's Rights, and Human Trafficking

This paper empirically investigates whether globalization can improve women's rights. Using panel data from 150 countries over the 1981-2008 period, I find that social globalization positively affects women's economic and social rights. When controlling for social globalization, however, economic globalization does not have any effect on women's rights. Despite the positive effect of (social) globalization ...

Paternal Child Care and Relationship Quality: A Longitudinal Analysis of Reciprocal Associations

This study explored reciprocal associations between paternal child-care involvement and relationship quality by following British couples from the birth of a child until he or she reached school age. It extends the literature by distinguishing between paternal engagement in absolute terms and relative to the mother and by considering relationship quality reports of mothers and fathers and family breakdown. ...

Firm Size and Efficiency in the German Mechanical Engineering Industry

Research usually finds a positive size-efficiency relationship, but few studies focus on sectors dominated by small and medium-sized firms (SMEs). This paper fills this gap by analyzing this relationship in the German mechanical engineering industry sector, which is both successful and increasingly dominated by SMEs. The analysis, using a large and representative dataset, finds that small and large ...

The Economic Impact of Violent Conflict: Introduction

Much of the work published in Defence and Peace Economics (DPE) significantly contributes to our understanding of the economics of conflict. Analyzing the second decade of its existence, Arce and Kollias (2010) showed that over time, the emphasis of work in DPE has shifted significantly. One rising field examines the consequences of conflict. Related to this, in 2011, DIW Berlin hosted a conference ...

The Effect of the Economic Reforms of the 1980s and the Customs Union Agreement of 1996 upon the Turkish Intra-industry Trade

In this paper, we analyse the impact of the economic reforms implemented in the 1980s and of the Customs Union Agreement of 1996 on the intra-industry trade in Turkey. We use panel data for 20 trading partners of Turkey and the sample period from 1969 until 2009. Controlling for the effects of standard determinants of intra-industry trade proposed in the literature, we find strong statistical evidence ...

Prepared to Plan? A Snapshot of Researcher Readiness to Address Data Management Planning Requirements

Objective. Cornell University's Research Data Management Service Group (RDMSG) surveyed NSF principal investigators (PIs) at Cornell in order to understand how well-prepared researchers are to meet the new NSF data management planning requirement, to build our own understanding of the potential impact on campus services, and to identify service gaps.. - Methods - We administered a 43-question online ...

The Interest Elasticity of Household Savings: A Structural Approach with German Micro Data

This paper empirically investigates the effects of changes in the interest rate as well as in the current and expected future consumer price levels on households' consumption-savings decision. In a structural demand model applied to German consumption data, we use cross-sectional and longitudinal variation in prices and tax rates to construct individual after-tax interest rates and cluster-specific ...