External refereed essays

Changes in Optimism and Pessimism in Response to Life Events: Evidence from Three Large Panel Studies

Although individuals vary in how optimistic they are about the future, one assumption that researchers make is that optimism is sensitive to changes in life events and circumstances. We examined how optimism and pessimism changed across the lifespan and in response to life events in three large panel studies (combined N = 74,886). In the American and Dutch samples, we found that optimism increased ...

Mental Health Outcomes of Adults Born Very Preterm or with Very Low Birth Weight: A Systematic Review

Preterm birth research is poised to explore the mental health of adults born very preterm(VP;

Common Ownership in the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry: A Network Analysis

We investigate patterns in common ownership networks between firms that are active in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry for the period 2004–2014. Our main findings are that “brand firms”—that is, firms that have research and development capabilities and launch new drugs—exhibit relatively dense common ownership networks with each other that further increase significantly in density over time, whereas ...

Lost Job, Lost Trust? On the Effect of Involuntary Job Loss on Trust

This paper tests the conjecture that involuntary job loss erodes trust. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel and considering how trust evolves over a quinquennial time interval, we find that job loss decreases trust by about 9 percent of a standard deviation.

Early Retirement as a Privilege for the Rich? A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Switzerland

This contribution analyses early retirement in Germany and Switzerland with a focus on financial resources. Using data from CH-SILC linked to administrative records and the German SOEP, we distinguish three different financial resources: namely, pre-retirement labour income, net worth and pension entitlements. High labour income reduces the probability for early retirement. In contrast, high pension ...

The Role of Budget Constraints in Sequential Elimination Tournaments

We study how budget constraints affect effort provision in sequential elimination tournaments. Our main result is that the introduction of budget constraints has two opposing effects on the initial effort of the unconstrained contestants, and leads to a non-monotonicity of this effort. This implies that if the budget asymmetry is not too large, total first-stage effort from unconstrained contestants ...

Waiting for Kin: A Longitudinal Study of Family Reunification and Refugee Mental Health in Germany

Involuntarily or planned – many refugees flee their home country alone, leave behind spouses and children but also siblings, parents and other family members they otherwise care for. Reunification in hosting communities is difficult, as governments limit institutional family reunifications and the individual journey of kin is dangerous and often illegal. Having family abroad is mentally distressing ...

The Economic Research Potentials of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study

We provide a concise introduction to a household-panel data infrastructure that provides the international research community with longitudinal data of private households in Germany since 1984: the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We demonstrate the comparative strength of the SOEP data in answering economically-relevant questions by highlighting its diverse and impactful applications throughout ...

Parental Labour Supply Responses to the Abolition of Day Care Fees

This paper provides evidence that low private contributions to highly subsidised day care constrain mothers from working longer hours. We study the effects of reforms that abolished day care fees in Germany on parental labour supply. The reforms removed private contributions to highly subsidised day care in the year before children enter primary school. We exploit the staggered reform across states ...

Gender Score Development in the Berlin Aging Study II: A Retrospective Approach

In addition to biological sex, gender, defined as the sociocultural dimension of being a woman or a man, plays acentral role in health. However, there are so far few approaches to quantify gender in a retrospective manner inexisting study datasets. We therefore aimed to develop a methodology that can be retrospectively applied to assessgender in existing cohorts. We used baseline data from the Berlin ...

Nonparametric Regression with Selectively Missing Covariates

We consider the problem of regression with selectively observed covariates in a nonparametric framework. Our approach relies on instrumental variables that explain variation in the latent covariates but have no direct effect on selection. The regression function of interest is shown to be a weighted version of observed conditional expectation where the weighting function is a fraction of selection ...

A Real Chance for Transatlantic Partnership on Climate Policy

The EU ETS to 2030 and beyond: Adjusting the Cap in Light of the 1.5°C Target and Current Energy Policies

The Paris Agreement calls on countries to pursue efforts to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5°C. We derive a 2016–2050 emission budget for the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) based on cost-effectiveness criteria aimed at achieving the 1.5°C target with a 50%–66% probability, and translate it into a cap reduction path. We show that, under current ETS parameters, the vast majority of ...

Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing: A Meta-Analysis

Understanding the distributional impacts of market-based climate policies is crucial to design economically efficient climate change mitigation policies that are socially acceptable and avoid adverse impacts on the poor. Empirical studies that examine the distributional impacts of carbon pricing and fossil fuel subsidy reforms in different countries arrive at ambiguous results. To systematically determine ...

Cost Efficiency and Endogenous Regulatory Choices: Evidence from the Transport Industry in France

We study the impact of different regulatory designs on the cost efficiency of operators providing a public service, exploiting data from the French transport industry. The distinctive feature of the study is that it considers regulatory regimes as endogenously determined choices, explained by economic, political, and institutional variables. Our approach leans on a positive analysis to study the determinants ...

Consequences of Overeducation among Career Starters in Germany: A Trap for the Vocationally Trained as well as for University Graduates?

Research on the consequences of starting in overeducation often focuses on either secondary or tertiary graduates. We focus on both within one country, Germany. While matching and search models imply the improvement of initial overeducation, human capital theory and stigma associated with overeducation predict entrapment. The strongly skill- and occupation-based labour market for the vocationally trained ...

Sovereign Default Risk, Macroeconomic Fluctuations and Monetary–Fiscal Stabilization

This paper examines the role of sovereign default beliefs for macroeconomic fluctuations and stabilization policy in a small open economy where fiscal solvency is a critical problem. We set up and estimate a DSGE model on Turkish data and show that accounting for sovereign risk significantly improves the fit of the model through an endogenous amplification between default beliefs, exchange rate and ...

The Challenged Sense of Belonging Scale (Csbs): A Validation Study in English, Arabic, and Farsi/Dari among Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Germany

This study introduces and investigates the validity of a brief scale measuring a challenged sense of belonging. The sense of belonging as well as challenges to this sense are important, albeit neglected aspects of social integration and of significance to migration and refugee studies as well as to virtually all other social science contexts. Assessing a challenged or eroded sense of belonging provides ...

Using a Mobile App When Surveying Highly Mobile Populations: Panel Attrition, Consent, and Interviewer Effects in a Survey of Refugees

Panel attrition poses major threats to the survey quality of panel studies. Many features have been introduced to keep panel attrition as low as possible. Based on a random sample of refugees, a highly mobile population, we investigate whether using a mobile phone application improves address quality and response behavior. Various features, including geo-tracking, collecting email addresses and adress ...

All-Pay Competition with Captive Consumers

We study a game in which two firms compete in quality to serve a market consisting of consumers with different initial consideration sets. If both firms invest below a certain threshold, they only compete for those consumers already aware of their existence. Above this threshold, a firm is visible to all and the highest investment attracts all consumers. On the one hand, the existence of initially ...