In this study, we examine how economic performance during the child-specific primary school phase, during which teachers make recommendations regarding secondary school level, affects the educational level achieved ultimately by these children. Using data for Germany, we find that an economic downturn, coupled with increased unemployment, affects children's education attainment negatively. In terms ...
We use a neoclassical production function to analyze the effects of knowledge spillovers via entrepreneurship on economic performance of 337 German districts. To take the spatial dependence structure of the data into account, we estimate a spatial Durbin model. We highlight the importance of the choice of the appropriate weight matrix. We find positive knowledge spillover effects via entrepreneurship ...
In spite of there being few elements of tax or cash benefit systems in developed countries that are any longer explicitly gender-biased in a discriminatory sense, it is well recognised that they have significant gender effects. To the extent that women earn less than men on average under tax-benefit systems that are progressive, there is some redistribution from men to women overall. However, an aggregate ...
The wage curve introduced by Blanchflower and Oswald (1990, 1994) postulates a negative correlation between wages and unemployment. Empirical results focus on particular theoretical channels establishing the relationship. Panel models mostly draw on unionized bargaining or the efficiency wage hypothesis. Spatial econometric approaches can be rationalized by monopsonistic competition. However, the approaches ...
This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. Based on a large representative German dataset including IQ test scores and measures of non-cognitive skills, a restricted maximum likelihood model indicates a strong relationship between family background and skill formation. Sibling correlations in non-cognitive ...
This paper analyzes the wage development of mothers interrupting their careers, in comparison to the wages of men who do not face a parental interruption. We estimate OLS regression models for different subcategories defined by age and point in time. We use data from the German Socioeconomic Panel from 1984 to 2011, to show that wages and the financial penalty for maternity differ according to the ...
We use a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice to study the effects of social security on the investment decisions of households for the European case. Our model is mainly based on the one developed by Cocco, Gomes, and Maenhout (2005). We extend it by unemployment risk using Markov chains to model the transition between different employment states. In contrast to most models in the ...
This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points. 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if mental health is included with a six-year lag. It explains more of the variance of life-satisfaction in the population of a country than physical health does, and much more than unemployment ...