External refereed essays

German Financial State Aid during Covid-19 Pandemic: Higher Impact among Digitalized Self-Employed

(In)equality at the Workplace? Differences in Occupational Safety and Health Measures during the Covid-19 Pandemic and Related Employee Health

Auf Basis der Daten einer Sondererhebung des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels zur Covid-19-Pandemie (SOEP-CoV) werden in diesem Beitrag Unterschiede in der Umsetzung verschiedener personenbezogener und organisatorischer Arbeitsschutzmaßnahmen während der Covid-19-Pandemie sowie deren Zusammenhang mit der individuellen Gesundheit von Beschäftigten untersucht. Hierzu wird zunächst ein kurzer Abriss zu sozialen ...

Replacing Gas Boilers with Heat Pumps Is the Fastest Way to Cut German Gas Consumption

The supply security of fossil gas has been disrupted by the Russo-Ukrainian War. Decisions to relocate the production and transport of gas have become so urgent that new long-term contracts are imminent that undermine the Paris Climate Agreement. Here, we simulate how quickly the addition of renewable electricity and the installation of heat pumps can substitute enough gas to reduce supply risk, while ...

Financial Incentives and Antibiotic Prescribing Patterns: Evidence from Dispensing Physicians in a Public Healthcare System

To ensure sufficient access to healthcare in remote areas, some countries allow physicians to directly dispense prescribed drugs through on-site pharmacies. Depending on the medication prescribed, this may pose a significant financial incentive for physicians to over-prescribe. This study, therefore, explored the effect of on-site pharmacies on antibiotic dispensing in a social health insurance system. ...

Technological Relatedness and Industrial Transformation: Introduction to the Special Issue

This article introduces eleven research articles that connect concepts of technological relatedness and diffusion with the transformation of industrial and innovation systems. These studies focus on the role of knowledge spillovers, regional variations in innovation and performance, and the evolution of new technologies, such as green and digital technologies. Regional capabilities and ability to diversify ...

The Price of Natural Gas Dependency: Price Shocks, Inequality, and Public Policy

The 2022 natural gas price spikes across Europe raised concerns regarding their distributional consequences. This paper investigates the distributional effect of price increases between and, in particular, within different income groups in Germany, accounting for different determinants of gas expenditures. The study finds that low-income households are affected the most by the gas price increase. Low-income ...

The Influence of Start-Up Motivation on Entrepreneurial Performance

Predicting entrepreneurial development based on individual and business-related characteristics is a key objective of entrepreneurship research. In this context, we investigate whether the motives of becoming an entrepreneur influence the subsequent entrepreneurial development. In our analysis, we examine a broad range of business outcomes including survival and income, as well as job creation, and ...

The Effect of Increasing Retirement Age on Households’ Savings and Consumption Expenditure

This paper examines how households adjust their savings and consumption expenditure in response to an anticipated increase in the early retirement age (ERA). We examine the 1999 pension reform in Germany, which increased the ERA for women born after 1951 by at least three years. First, we present suggestive evidence that women update their retirement planning in response to the reform. Using the German ...

Monetary Policy, External Instruments, and Heteroskedasticity

We develop a structural vector autoregressive framework that combines external instruments and heteroskedasticity for identification of monetary policy shocks. We show that exploiting both types of information sharpens structural inference, allows testing the relevance and exogeneity condition for instruments separately using likelihood ratio tests, and facilitates the economic interpretation of the ...

Do Women Expect Wage Cuts for Part-Time Work?

I quantify the perceived changes in hourly wage rates associated with working different hours on the same job for a representative sample of female workers. While part-time working women expect significant hourly wage gains from switching to full-time work - 7% on average - full-time workers expect no effect on current wages when switching to part-time, on average. Perceived pecuniary losses from part-time ...

A Tale of Two Data Sets: Comparing German Administrative and Survey Data Using Wage Inequality as an Example

The IAB’s Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) are the two data sets most commonly used to analyze wage inequality in Germany. While the SIAB is based on administrative reports by employers to the social security system, the SOEP is a survey data set in which respondents self-report their wages. Both data sources have their specific advantages and ...

Do Rent Controls and Other Tenancy Regulations Affect New Construction? Some Answers from Long-Run Historical Evidence

Optimal Taxation When the Tax Burden Matters

Survey evidence shows that the magnitude of the tax liability plays a role in value judgements about which groups deserve tax breaks. We demonstrate that the German tax-transfer system conflicts with a welfarist inequality averse social planner. It is consistent with a planner who is averse to both inequality and high tax liabilities. The tax-transfer schedule reflects non-welfarist value judgements ...

From German Internet Panel to Mannheim Corona Study: Adaptable Probability‐Based Online Panel Infrastructures during the Pandemic

The outbreak of COVID‐19 has sparked a sudden demand for fast, frequent and accurate data on the societal impact of the pandemic. This demand has highlighted a divide in survey data collection: Most probability‐based social surveys, which can deliver the necessary data quality to allow valid inference to the general population, are slow, infrequent and ill‐equipped to survey people during a lockdown. ...

Linking Brain Age Gap to Mental and Physical Health in the Berlin Aging Study II

From a biological perspective, humans differ in the speed they age, and this may manifest in both mental and physical health disparities. The discrepancy between an individual’s biological and chronological age of the brain (“brain age gap”) can be assessed by applying machine learning techniques to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data. Here, we examined the links between brain age gap and a broad ...

My Wealth, (Y)Our Life Satisfaction? Sole and Joint Wealth Ownership and Life Satisfaction in Marriage

This study examines the money-subjective well-being nexus by studying the link between changes in jointly and solely (i.e. respondents’ own and their partner’s own) held gross wealth and changes in married individuals’ subjective well-being. Joint assets reflect norms of sharing responsibilities and resources. Solely held assets, in contrast, offer individual economic independence. Using wealth data ...

Did Immigrants Perceive More Job Insecurity during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic? Evidence from German Panel Data

Immigrants have been affected more than native-born ethnic majority populations by the negative economic consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This contribution examines whether they have also experienced higher levels of perceived job insecurity, reflected in a differential increase in financial concerns and the fear of job loss during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This empirical study employs the SOEP-CoV ...

Vom Helfer zur Fachkraft mit betrieblicher Weiterbildung? Berufliche Aufstiege und Lohnveränderungen von an- und ungelernten Beschäftigten in regulierten und unregulierten internen Arbeitsmärkten

A considerable share of low-skilled workers in Germany perform speciali-zed activities for which some kind of formal vocational qualification is required.This article examines the role of non-formal in-company training for the careeradvancement of low-skilled workers in the internal labor market. The focus is onthe role of regulating structures. Based on the human capital and filter theory aswell as ...

The Impact of Migration on Wages in Costa Rica

In recent years, Costa Rica has experienced greater international migration from neighboring countries due to political, economic, and social reasons, raising discussions on the impact of migration on wages of native Costa Rican workers. This article is the first that disentangles the impact of migration on wages for native Costa Ricans from the impact for settled immigrants by analyzing the effect ...

Local Energy Markets

In current power markets, the bulk of electricity is sold wholesale and transported to consumers via long-distance transmission lines. Recently, decentralized local energy markets have evolved, often as isolated networks based on solar generation. We analyze strategic pricing, investment, and welfare in local energy markets. We show that local energy markets yield competitive equilibrium prices and ...