External refereed essays

Measurement Equivalence in Probability and Nonprobability Online Panels

Nonprobability online panels are commonly used in the social sciences as a fast and inexpensive way of collecting data in contrast to more expensive probability-based panels. Given their ubiquitous use in social science research, a great deal of research is being undertaken to assess the properties of nonprobability panels relative to probability ones. Much of this research focuses on selection bias, ...

The Pricing Structure of Legal Services: Do Lawyers Offer What Clients Want?

We analyze clients’ contract choices in auctions where Dutch law firms compete for standard cases such as labor disputes for individuals and collecting debts for businesses. In the auctions, lawyers can submit bids with any fee arrangement they prefer, including an hourly rate, a fixed fee, and a ‘mixed fee’: a time-capped fixed fee plus an hourly rate for any additional hours should the case take ...

Eine Dateninfrastruktur für die Gesellschaftswissenschaften: Unterstützung in der Arbeit mit Forschungsdaten durch KonsortSWD

Neue Grundsätze im Ethikkodex des Vereins für Socialpolitik

Die Mitglieder des Vereins für Socialpolitik haben auf ihrer Mitgliederversammlung am 8. Dezember 2021 mit deutlicher Mehrheit beschlossen, den seit 2012 bestehenden Ethikkodex um Inhalte der „guten beruflichen Praxis“ zu erweitern. Neben ethischen Standards für die wissenschaftliche Arbeit haben sich die Vereinsmitglieder mit diesem Beschluss auch dem Streben nach Inklusion, Nicht-Diskriminierung ...

Bürgergeld und Kindergrundsicherung als Einstiege ins bedingungslose Grundeinkommen?

Im Beitrag wird diskutiert, ob es sich bei der vorgesehenen Ablösung von Hartz IV durch ein Bürgergeld und den Aufbau einer Kindergrundsicherung eher um einen symbolischen Wandel handelt oder die im Herbst 2021 gewählte Ampel-Koalition einen substanziellen Neuanfang und eine grundlegende Reform des Wohlfahrtsstaates einleitet. Zusammenfassend werden die geplanten Maßnahmen der neuen Bundesregierung ...

Testing the Superstar Firm Hypothesis

Firms with superior productivity, labeled superstar firms, are argued to be the link between rising concentration and the fall of the aggregate labor share in the US. This analysis confirms that similar evidence is found within the European context: the market share and firm size increase, whereas the labor share decreases with productivity. One of the much discussed mechanisms behind this development ...

Experienced Well-Being and Labor Market Status: The Role of Pleasure and Meaning

This paper examines the experienced well-being of employed and unemployed workers. We use the survey-adapted Day Reconstruction Method of the Innovation Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study to analyze the role of the employment status for well-being, incorporating time use. We use the novel P-index to summarize the average share of pleasurable minutes on a day and show that in contrast to ...

Social Norms and Preventive Behaviors in Japan and Germany during the COVID-19 Pandemic

According to a recent paper by Gelfand et al., COVID-19 infection and case mortality rates are closely connected to the strength of social norms: “Tighter” cultures that abide by strict social norms are more successful in combating the pandemic than “looser” cultures that are more permissive. However, countries with similar levels of cultural tightness exhibit big differences in mortality rates. We ...

Information Provision and Postgraduate Studies

This is the first paper to examine experimentally effects of information provision on beliefs about pecuniary and non-pecuniary returns of postgraduate education, enrolment intentions and realized enrolment. We find that our treatment causally affects beliefs measured six months after treatment. The effects on beliefs differ by gender and academic background, and we find that stated enrolment intentions ...

The Personality Traits of Self-Made and Inherited Millionaires

Very wealthy people influence political and societal processes by wielding their economic power through foundations, lobbying groups, media campaigns, as investors and employers. Because personality shapes goals, attitudes, and behaviour, it is important to understand the personality traits that characterize the rich. We used representative survey data to construct two large samples, one from the general ...

Assessing the Value of Data for Prediction Policies: The Case of Antibiotic Prescribing

We quantify the value of data for the prediction policy problem of reducing antibiotic prescribing to curb antibiotic resistance. Using varying combinations of administrative data, we evaluate machine learning predictions for diagnosing bacterial urinary tract infections and the outcomes of prescription rules based on these predictions. Simple patient demographics improve prediction quality substantially ...

Care and Careers: Gender (In)Equality in Unpaid Care, Housework and Employment

This article examines whether reducing care and housework duties and redistributing them within different-sex couples could further enhance gender equality on the labor market in terms of labor market participation for different employment types and actual working hours. Women around the world perform the majority of unpaid care and housework, with a large and persistent gap to men. Most research explains ...

Sovereign Bonds since Waterloo

This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. We compile a new database of 266,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering up to 91 countries. Our main insight is that, as in equity markets, the returns on external sovereign bonds have been sufficiently high to compensate for risk. Real ...

Evidenzbasierte Verbandsarbeit: der erweiterte Ethikkodex des Vereins für Socialpolitik

Der neue Ethikkodex des Vereins für Socialpolitik nimmt Stellung gegen die Diskriminierung von Frauen und Minderheiten, sexuelle und anderweitige Belästigung im Arbeitsumfeld sowie das Schaffen eines feindseligen Umfelds. Neuere Untersuchungen zeigen, dass eine Gleichberechtigung von Frauen und Minderheiten in der Volkswirtschaftslehre noch nicht vorliegt. Der erweiterte Ethikkodex ist ein Schritt ...

In an Imperfect World Policy Rules Cannot be Perfect Either: Letter

It is striking that economists in particular firmly believe in the benefits of rule-binding, even though this belief runs counter to the standard assumption of economic theory that we humans are self-interested and therefore extremely resourceful when it comes to circumventing inconvenient government regulations, e.g. taxes. In Public Choice Theory, politicians are even assumed to have nothing but ...

Der antizyklische Kapitalpuffer: Reformoptionen

Der antizyklische Eigenkapitalpuffer, dessen Anforderung Kreditinstitute erfüllen müssen, soll die Widerstandskraft des Bankensystems stärken und dadurch die Kreditversorgung verstetigen. Damit sollen starke Auswirkungen des Finanzzyklus und entsprechende Krisen abgeschwächt werden. Dieses Instrument wurde 2016 eingeführt, sodass jetzt erste Erfahrungen vorliegen. Diese werden derzeit z. B. im makroprudenziellen ...

Remunicipalization, Corporatization, and Outsourcing: The Performance of Public-Sector Firms after Reorganization

This article investigates the impact of reorganization on productivity within public-sector firms addressing the owners' composition, the board-management relationship, and the management's decision to outsource activities. Considering a large panel of 2,325 German municipally owned utilities between 2003 and 2014, firm-level productivity is estimated based on a control function approach. Contrary ...

Overcoming Barriers to Service Access: Refugees’ Professional Support Service Utilization and the Impact of Human and Social Capital

After arriving in a new country, refugees are typically dependent on professional support to re-establish their livelihood. However, it is well documented that refugees face barriers when seeking access to services aimed at facilitating their settlement. This study examines refugees’ support service needs, their actual utilization, and investigates the impact of social and human capital on service ...

Financial Education Affects Financial Knowledge and Downstream Behaviors

We study the rapidly growing literature on the causal effects of financial education programs in a meta-analysis of 76 randomized experiments with a total sample size of over 160,000 individuals. Many of these experiments are published in top economics and finance journals. The evidence shows that financial education programs have, on average, positive causal treatment effects on financial knowledge ...

Sexual and Gender Minority (SGM) Research Meets Household Panel Surveys: Research Potentials of the German Socio-Economic Panel and Its Boost Sample of SGM Households

There are numerous challenges to studying structural inequality in sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations, from the difficulty of obtaining a representative sample to issues comparing data across populations. This data brief illustrates how the largest household panel survey in Germany, the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), and its recent nationwide boost sample of SGM households, Sample Q, ...