Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Scared Straight? Threat and Assimilation of Refugees in Germany

This paper studies the effects of threat on convergence to local culture and economic assimilation of refugees, exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in their allocation across German regions between 2013 and 2016. We combine novel survey data on cultural preferences and economic outcomes of refugees with corresponding information on locals, and construct a threat index that integrates contemporaneous ...

Does weekend commuting really pay off? A panel analysis with German data

Second homes and weekend commuting are frequently used strategies for covering large distances between the place of work and residence. The literature posits a positive association between work-related spatial mobility, social mobility, and career achievement. However, so far, surprisingly little attention has been paid explicitly to the relationship between weekend commuting (i.e. work-related residential ...

For better or for worse mental health? The role of family networks in exogamous unions

This study tests whether being in an exogamous union affects older individual's family networks, and whether associations between exogamy and mental health reported in previous studies operate through changes in family ties and differ by gender. We focus on individuals aged 60 or above in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study between 2002 and 2016. We describe demographic and family characteristics ...

Emotions and Risk Attitudes

Previous work has shown that preferences are not always stable across time, but surprisingly little is known about the reasons for this instability. I examine whether variation in people's emotions over time predicts changes in risk attitudes. Using a large-panel dataset, I identify happiness, anger, and fear as significant correlates of within-person changes in risk attitudes. Robustness checks ...

No Evidence That Siblings' Gender Affects Personality across Nine Countries

Does growing up with a sister rather than a brother affect personality? In this article, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the effects of siblings’ gender on adults’ personality, using data from 85,887 people from 12 large representative surveys covering nine countries (United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Mexico, China, and Indonesia). We investigated ...

Information Frictions among Firms and Households

We survey samples of German firms and households to document novel stylized facts about the extent of information frictions among the two groups. First, firms' expectations about macroeconomic variables are closer to expert forecasts and less dispersed than households', consistent with higher information frictions among households. Second, the degree of dispersion and the distance from expert ...

Managers' Risk Preferences and Firm Training Investments

We provide the first estimates of the impact of managers' risk preferences on their training allocation decisions. Our conceptual framework links managers' risk preferences to firms' training decisions through the bonuses they expect to receive. Risk-averse managers are expected to select workers with low turnover risk and invest in specific rather than general training. Empirical evidence ...

Myths and Facts About Inequality

Which Decision Theory Describes Life Satisfaction Best? Evidence from Annual Panel Data

We use an annual household panel to test which features of prospect theory can be supported by measures of life satisfaction. We also test whether recalled or expected life satisfaction is anchored at current life satisfaction and adjusted in the direction of the recall or expectation. Using a fixed effects estimator we find that life satisfaction contains features of both classic expected utility ...

Impact of Inequality-Related Media Coverage on the Concerns of the Citizens

Income distribution and inequality play a central role in the public and political debate in many developed and democratic countries. An increasing literature on (mis)perception of the distribution of income reveals that people have very little knowledge about the degree of inequality in the society and its development over time. The jury is still out on what actually drives the perception of inequality ...