The German Socio-Economic Panel Study is a representative panel study for the German population, collecting data on a broad variety of topics of everyday life, including general well-being, household composition, educational aspirations and educational status, income and occupational biographies, leisure time activities, housing, health, political orientation and more. With its long running panel structure, the breadth of topics and the representative nature of the data, the SOEP has become a central resources for quantitative research in the social sciences in Germany.

Using a novel dataset encompassing all crime reports in Brazil and employing a matched differences-in-differences design, we find that victims of assault experience a 7-10% reduction in labor market participation, with persistent and permanent effects evident even five years after the incident. Victims are less likely to search for jobs and significantly more likely to be absent from work. Overall, crime victims face a permanent income loss of 5-10% following the incident. Several mechanisms are examined to explain this effect. 

Free, fair, and diversified trade plays a crucial role in the development of new technologies and thus also in the success of industrial and innovation policy strategies. Access to critical raw materials and other inputs, such as semiconductors or steel scrap, is often a prerequisite for the development of new technologies, including in the important areas of digitalization and decarbonization. At the same time, access to international markets is crucial – especially for smaller open economies – in order to achieve economies of scale and thus quickly enhance cost efficiency of new technologies. However, by subsidizing technologies that have not yet reached market maturity, industrial policy can unintentionally distort global competition and fuel ongoing trade disputes. Overall, countries around the world are preparing for a more protectionist global environment. Many are attempting to become less dependent on critical imports by building up domestic industries and promoting a more circular economy. The roundtable will discuss how OECD countries and partners can work together more effectively to better leverage the synergies between successful industrial policy strategies and open global markets, while managing tensions. How can access to critical inputs and markets be improved by establishing and expanding trade partnerships? What ways are there to promote the development of new technologies in a way that distorts international competition as little as possible, and when shift comes to shove how can trade disputes around industrial policies be resolved?

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We show that personal experiences affect high-stakes economic decisions among inventors. Using matched patent and survey data from French and German inventors linked to natural disaster records, we exploit exogenous variation in disaster exposure. Inventors personally affected by natural disasters subsequently produce 8.2 percent more green patents, primarily driven by emission-reducing mitigation technologies, while non-green innovation remains unaffected. The absence of sizable spatial spillovers highlights the importance of personal experience. Disaster exposure shapes innovation choices by altering profitability expectations through shifting higher-order beliefs about consumer demand and anticipated regulation. Embedding this channel in a formal model, we disentangle the role of expectations and intrinsic motivation. The model predicts, and the data confirm, that effects are strongest in competitive markets, where profit incentives matter most.

While inequalities in inter-vivos gifts and bequests between families are widely recognized as key drivers of wealth inequality, less is known about the unequal transmission of wealth within families. This study addresses this gap by asking: (1) To what extent are estates unequally divided? (2) How do estate portfolios, primogeniture, and patrilineality shape unequal estate division? (3) What is the impact of unequal estate division on inheritance inequality? Analyzing administrative data from the German inheritance and gift tax register (2007–2020), we find that 38 percent of estates are unequally divided between children. Unequal division is most pronounced at the top of the distribution and when business assets dominate the estate. Sons benefit rather than firstborn children, reflecting patrilineal practices. Overall inheritance inequality would be reduced by 8 percent if estates were divided equally. These findings shed novel light on how the family generates inequalities both within and across generations.

Academic life is full of challenge and possibility. You get to ask big questions, dive deep into ideas, and push the boundaries of what’s known. But the same environment — with its high expectations and constant deadlines — can leave you stretched thin, stuck in your head, and unsure if you’re doing enough.

Neeltje van Horen knows that tension well. As a professor of economics and senior advisor at the Bank of England, she spent years in high-performance settings — while quietly battling stress and self-doubt. Eventually, she began exploring a different way of working: one grounded in neuroscience, psychology, and small mental shifts that helped her feel clearer, calmer, and more in control.

In this talk, based on her book Ignite, Neeltje shares practical, science-based tools to protect your focus, calm your mind, and stay steady under pressure. Blending research with personal experience, she offers a more sustainable path for researchers who want to excel — without burning out.

This one-day conference brings together leading researchers and policymakers to discuss the interactions between fiscal policy, public debt, monetary transmission, innovation, and inequality. The program features research presentations, panel discussions, and opportunities for exchange across academia and policy institutions.

This study examines the 2016 reform of Germany's Residence Act that intended to foster refugee integration by extending the waiting period for permanent residency from three to five years and introducing requirements, such as proficiency in German and partial financial independence. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we employ a difference-in-differences design to analyse employment and full-time employment trends among refugees. Results show that the reform did not accelerate take-up rates of either overall or full-time employment. However, administrative data from the German Central Register of Foreign Nationals reveals that after the reform permanent residency acquisition rates significantly declined. The findings call into question the efficacy of conditional residency policies in fostering labour market integration.

Regional economic disparities within countries have become increasingly large, often surpassing the disparities observed between countries. To address regional inequality, governments have been turning away from standard subsidies and are experimenting with public employment reallocation as a place-based policy. This paper estimates the causal effect of public employment reallocation on local labor markets. I study the Heimatstrategie, which relocates around 3,000 public sector jobs from Munich to economically lagging regions in Bavaria, Germany. Using novel data on 60 agency relocations between 2015 and 2025, I exploit the government’s quantitative selection criteria for receiving municipalities and implement a long-differences design comparing treated Bavarian municipalities to Mahalanobis-matched control municipalities in other German states. My estimates show that relocations increased private sector employment shares by up to 2.3%, reduced unemployment rates by up to 11.9%, and increased local population by up to 1.6% without harming sending locations. These results correspond to a public-to-private jobs multiplier of 1.08. To assess general equilibrium effects of the relocation program, I implement a quantitative spatial model with a two-sector (public and private) framework, showing modest increases in amenities through the relocation counterfactual and negligible welfare effects.

Latin America is facing rapid population aging. To address the sustainability of contributory pension systems, many countries are considering increasing the retirement age. One such case is Brazil, where a pension reform in 2019 raised the retirement age from 60 to 62 for women. While the effects of such reforms on the labor force participation of older adults and their spouses have been widely analyzed, intergenerational spillover effects remain understudied, particularly in Latin America. Evidence from other contexts suggests that a mother’s retirement can increase her young daughters’ labor supply, particularly among households with young children. However, most of this evidence comes from European countries with broader access to formal sources of childcare. In this paper, I estimate the effect of grandmother’s retirement on the labor force participation of young adults in Brazil. Using data from Brazil’s Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNADC) from 2023 and a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, I find that older women substantially reduce their working hours upon retirement. Moreover, adult women living with young children and an older woman who retires upon reaching the minimum retirement age increase their working hours by 0.5 for every hour the older woman stops working. No significant effects are observed for men, even when young children are present in the household. These findings suggest that, in contexts with limited access to formal childcare, grandmothers play a crucial role in supporting their daughters’ labor supply, particularly when young children are involved.

The 16th International German Socio-Economic Panel User Conference (SOEP2026) will be held in Berlin from July 8 to 9, 2026. 

The conference provides researchers who use the SOEP with the opportunity to present and discuss their work with their peers. This includes users of the SOEP part of the Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF), LIS/LWS data, and SOEP-IS, as well as users of the migration samples (IAB-SOEP, IAB-BAMF-SOEP). 

We particularly welcome contributions addressing meta-science, robustness, replicability, reproducibility, and open science. This includes, but is not limited to, studies that compare and/or combine different populations or samples, analyses, designs, methods, and time periods. In addition, we encourage submissions beyond this thematic focus, especially those making use of the longitudinal features of SOEP, as well as submissions on survey methodology and cross-national comparative analysis.