Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Are All Single Mothers the Same? Evidence from British and West German Women’s Employment Trajectories

Single motherhood is often discussed as a reason for women’s non-employment. This article investigates women’s employment trajectories during and after single motherhood in the welfare state contexts of Britain and West Germany. Sequence analysis is applied to longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (N¼329) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (N¼378), comparing patterns in employment ...

Understanding Differences in Labour Market Attachment of Single Mothers in Great Britain and West Germany

This paper investigates the relationships between single mothers’ demographic and socio-economic circumstances and differences in their labour market attachment in Great Britain and West Germany. Single mothers’ employment is a key issue in current policy debates in both countries, as well as in research on the major challenges of contemporary welfare states. The heterogeneity of the group of women ...

Count Data Models. Econometric Theory and an Application to Labor Mobility (Lecture Notes in Econometrics and Mathematical Systems 410; Dissertation)

Another Look at Work Contracts and Absenteeism

A count data model for gamma waiting times

A new distribution for non-negative integers, or counts, is developed. It is based on the assumption that the waiting times separating consecutive events are independently and identically gamma distributed. Thus, the structural process generating the counts may exhibit duration dependence. In this framework, the frequently observed phenomenon of overdispersion, that is a variance that exceeds the mean, ...

Count Data Models With Selectivity

Employment Prospects and Skill Acquisition of Apprenticeship-trained Workers in Germany

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984-90, the author analyzes the entrance of young individuals into the German labor market, comparing the experience of apprenticeship graduates to that of graduates from universities, full-time vocational schools, and secondary schools. Apprentices experienced fewer unemployment spells in the transition to their first full-time employment than did ...

Markov Chain Monte Carlo Analysis of Underreported Count Data With an Application to Worker Absenteeism

A new approach for modeling under-reported Poisson counts is developed. The parameters of the model are estimated by Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. An application to workers absenteeism data from the German Socio-Economic Panel illustrates the fruitfulness of the approach. Worker absenteeism and the level of pay are unrelated, but absence rates increase with firm size.

Training, Earnings and Mobility in Germany

Unskilled labor and wage determination: An empirical investigation for Germany

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on native wage impacts of immigration. I propose a mobile-fixed factor distinction as a framework in which to think about the differential impact of immigration on various labor market groups. Skilled workers are treated as a fixed factor of production since the strong reliance on skill certification in Germany inhibits mobility and shelters from competition. ...