External refereed essays

Mortality by Education, Occupational Class and Income in Finland in the 1990s and 2000s

Differences in mortality by socio-economic position (SEP) are well established, but there is uncertainty as to which dimension of SEP is most important in what context. This study compares the relationship between three SEP dimensions and mortality in Finland, during the periods 1990–97 and 2000–07, and to existing results for Sweden. We use an 11% random sample from the Finnish population with information ...

Labor Market and Distributional Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age

We evaluate the labor market and distributional effects of an increase in the early retirement age (ERA) from 60 to 63 for women born after 1951. We use a regression discontinuity design which exploits the strong increase in the ERA between women born in 1951 and 1952. The analysis is based on the German microcensus which includes about 370,000 households per year. We focus on heterogeneous labor market ...

The Well-Being Benefits of Person-Culture Match Are Contingent on Basic Personality Traits

People enjoy well-being benefits if their personal characteristics match those of their culture. This person-culture match effect is integral to many psychological theories and—as a driver of migration—carries much societal relevance. But do people differ in the degree to which person-culture match confers well-being benefits? In the first-ever empirical test of that question, we examined whether the ...

How Consumers Trade Off Supply Security and Green Electricity: Evidence from Germany and Great Britain

The expansion of renewable energies requires infrastructure investments to at least maintain the stability of electricity grids. Using survey data from residential consumers in Germany and Great Britain, we infer in pecuniary terms the extent to which people are prepared to reward the presence of renewable resources in electricity production and how they trade off this change in the fuel mix against ...

Impact of COVID-19 Measures on Short-Term Electricity Consumption in the Most Affected EU Countries and USA States

As COVID-19 spreads worldwide, governments have been implementing a wide range of measures to contain it, from movement restrictions to economy-wide shutdowns. Understanding their impacts is essential to support better policies for countries still experiencing outbreaks or in case of emergence of subsequent pandemic waves. Here we show that the cumulative decline in electricity consumption within the ...

The Political Economy of Coal in Poland: Drivers and Barriers for a Shift away from Fossil Fuels

Poland is the largest hard coal and second largest lignite producer in the EU, generating around 80 percent of its electricity from coal. Resistance to a reduction in coal production and consumption comes from various actors, namely, coal corporations, unions, parts of civil society and the government – as well as their coalitions. Their opposition centres around the prospect of losing their business, ...

Analysing Effects of Birth Order on Intelligence, Educational Attainment, Big Five, and Risk Aversion in an Indonesian Sample

Few studies have examined birth order effects on personality in countries that are not Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD). However, theories have generally suggested that interculturally universal family dynamics are the mechanism behind birth order effects, and prominent theories such as resource dilutionwould predict even stronger linear effects in poorer countries. Here, ...

Parental Wealth and Children's Cognitive Ability, Mental, and Physical Health: Evidence from the UK Millenium Cohort Study

This article investigates the influence of wealth, a frequently neglected aspect of the economic circumstances of families, on children’s development. Using the UK Millennium Cohort Study, it explores whether parental wealth (net total wealth, net housing wealth, net financial wealth, and house value) is associated with children’s cognitive ability, mental, and physical health at age 11 (N = 8,645), ...

Akzeptanz von assistiven Robotern im Pflege- und Gesundheitsbereich: Repräsentative Daten zeichnen ein klares Bild für Deutschland

Angesichts der Alterung der Gesellschaft und der hohen Kosten für die Unterstützung und Pflege in privaten Haushalten stellt sich die Frage, welche Rolle assistive Roboter spielen können. Dieser Beitrag richtet sich auf die Frage, inwieweit Roboter in der Pflege heute von der erwachsenen Bevölkerung in Deutschland akzeptiert werden. Und inwieweit beeinflussen Geschlecht, Alter und Erfahrung (beruflich, ...

How People Know Their Risk Preference

People differ in their willingness to take risks. Recent work found that revealed preference tasks (e.g., laboratory lotteries)—a dominant class of measures—are outperformed by survey-based stated preferences, which are more stable and predict real-world risk taking across different domains. How can stated preferences, often criticised as inconsequential “cheap talk,” be more valid and predictive ...

The Effects of a Parenting Program on Maternal Well-Being: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

This paper evaluates how a light-touch parenting program for parents of children below school entry age affects maternal family well-being. We analyze data from a randomized controlled trial focusing on non-disadvantaged parents. Overall, results show no short-term effects but a relatively large positive effect of the intervention on maternal family well-being in the medium term. With a 20- to 30-percent ...

Abuse of Dominance and Antitrust Enforcement in the German Electricity Market

Gender and Changes in Household Wealth after the Dissolution of Marriage and Cohabitation in Germany

Objective: To document how changes in household wealth following the dissolution of marriage and cohabitation differ by gender in Germany.Background: Marital property regimes usually prescribe that both partners receive a share of the couple's wealth following a divorce. The dissolution of cohabiting unions is not governed by marital property regimes in most countries, including Germany. Because men, ...

Estimating the Impact of Financial Investments on Agricultural Futures Prices Using Changes in Volatility

This paper studies the impact of financial investments on agricultural futures prices, using structural vector autoregressions. We identify exogenous variation in net long positions of speculators through heteroskedasticity. We first show that demand shocks of both index investors and noncommercial traders lead to a statistically significant contemporaneous increase in futures prices. We then quantify ...

Depression, Neuroticism and 2D:4D Ratio: Evidence from a Large, Representative Sample

A body of literature reports higher rates of depression and neuroticism in female samples compared to male samples. Numerous studies have investigated the role of prenatal sex hormone exposure in this sex difference, using the ratio between the second and fourth digit of the hand (“2D:4D”) as a putative marker. However, the sample sizes of those studies were mostly small and results remained inconclusive. ...

Living Conditions and the Mental Health and Well-being of Refugees: Evidence from a Large-Scale German Survey

Refugees are at an increased risk of mental health problems and low subjective well-being. Living circumstances in the host country are thought to play a vital role in shaping these health outcomes, which, in turn, are prerequisites for successful integration. Using data from a representative survey of 4325 adult refugees who arrived in Germany between 2013 and 2016, we investigated how different living ...

The Economic Costs of Hybrid Wars: The Case of Ukraine

With more than ten thousand casualties, the ongoing hybrid Ukrainian war between pro-Russian separatists and the government in the Donbass region, Ukraine’s productive core, has taken a severe toll on the country. Using cross-country panel data over the period 1995–2017, this paper estimates the causal effects of the Donbass war on Ukraine’s GDP. Our counterfactual estimation by the synthetic control ...

Electricity Storage and the Renewable Energy Transition

Frequency and Duration of Low-Wind-Power Events in Germany

In the transition to a renewable energy system, the occurrence of low-wind-power events receives increasing attention. We analyze the frequency and duration of such events for onshore wind power in Germany, based on 40 years of reanalysis data and open software. We find that low-wind-power events are less frequent in winter than in summer, but the maximum duration is distributed more evenly between ...

Psychological Distress among Refugees in Germany: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Individual and Contextual Risk Factors and Potential Consequences for Integration Using a Nationally Representative Survey

Objectives Responding to the mental health needs of refugees remains a pressing challenge worldwide. We estimated the prevalence of psychological distress in a large refugee population in Germany and assessed its association with host country factors amenable to policy intervention and integration indicators.Design A cross-sectional and population- based secondary analysis of the 2017 wave of the IAB- ...