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VdF: Best Presentation Prize 2002

Prize committee

  • Jennifer Hunt (Université de Montréal/Canada)
  • Elke Holst (SOEP/DIW Berlin)
  • Heather Laurie (ISER/Essex/UK)
  • Ruud Muffels (Tilburg University/NL)
  • Jürgen Schupp (SOEP/DIW Berlin)


Honored papers (in alphabetical order)

Martin Biewen, University of Heidelberg: "The Covariance Structure of East and West German Incomes and its Implications for the Persistence of Poverty and Inequality."
Prize money: € 250,--.
Committee comments: Martin Biewen uses the GSOEP to examine how people move around in the household income distribution relative to one another. Biewen carefully models how the income of an individual in a household changes over time, and uses the estimated parameters to distinguish to what degree changes in income are transitory, implying equality over the long run, or permanent. Changes in the east have moved from being principally transitory to being principally permanent. His results imply that expected poverty duration is two years for the west, and slightly less than that for the most recent year in the east.

Markus Pannenberg, DIW Berlin/IZA: " Long - Term Effects of Unpaid Overtime - Evidence for West Germany"
Prize money: € 250,--.
Committee comments: Markus Pannenberg addresses the intriguing question of why people work unpaid overtime. In particular, he tests the hypothesis that workers do this to signal to their boss that they are high quality by visible efforts. If this were the case, workers who do unpaid overtime should be rewarded with higher wages in the future. He finds this to be true for men but not women, raising interesting questions of discrimination in the workplace.

Jörg-Peter Schräpler, Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM), University Maryland (UMD): "Respondent Behavior in Panel Studies - A Case Study for Item-Nonresponse by Means of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP)"
Prize money: € 250,--.
Committee comments: Jörg-Peter Schräpler examines why some GSOEP respondents participate in the survey, but do not answer the question on gross monthly earnings. Schräpler combines a theoretical section drawing on several social sciences with an empirical section. He finds that it is important to distinguish between those who do not answer because they do not know their earnings, and those that refuse to answer. High earnings people are more likely to refuse to answer, while women and low earnings people are more likely not to know their earnings. Respondents are more likely not to remember their earnings if the interviewer is female.

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