Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Surfing Alone? The Internet and Social Capital: Evidence from an Unforeseeable Technological Mistake

Does the Internet undermine social capital, such as real-world inter-personal relations and civic engagement? Merging unique telecommunication data with geo-coded German individual-level data, we investigate how broadband Internet affects social capital. A first identification strategy uses first-differencing to account for unobserved time-invariant individual heterogeneity. A second identification ...

Public Child Care and Mothers’ Labor Supply – Evidence from Two Quasi-Experiments

Public child care provision should reconcile work and family life. Yet, empirical evidence for the relevance of public child care for maternal employment is ambiguous. We exploit the introduction of a legal claim to a place in kindergarten in Germany, which was contingent on month-of-birth cut-off dates and resulted in a marked increase in kindergarten attendance of three year olds in the following ...

Health-Related Quality of Life Into Adulthood After Very Preterm Birth

BACKGROUND: This study investigated change of health-related quality of life (HRQL) in very preterm/very low birth weight (VP/VLBW; born at <32 weeks’ gestation and/or <1500 g birth weight) individuals from adolescence to adulthood. Are perceptions similar by different informants (self, parents) and is HRQL related to economic and social functioning? METHODS: In a prospective whole-population ...

Offshoring, tasks, and the skill-wage pattern

The paper investigates the relationship between offshoring, wages, and the occupational task profile using rich individual-level panel data. Our main results suggest that, when only considering within-industry changes in offshoring, we identify a moderate wage reduction due to offshoring for low-skilled workers, though wage effects in relation to the task profile of occupations are not estimated with ...

Are There Any Class Size Effects on Early Career Earnings in West Germany

Empirical Evaluation of Selected Labour Market and Education Policies (Dissertation)

Enrolment into Higher Education and Changes in Repayment Obligations of Student Aid - Microeconometric Evidence for Germany -

Student Aid, Repayment Obligations and Enrolment in Higher Education in Germany - Evidence from a "Natural Experiment"

Does More Generous Student Aid Increase Enrolment Rates into Higher Education? - Evaluating the German Student Aid Reform of 2001

Trends in Intragenerational Income Mobility in the Western States of Germany and the United States (1984-2006)

Using the Shorrocks R, we compare trends in intragenerational income mobility for the western states of Germany and the United States (1984 – 2006) and test the sensitivity of our results to the starting point and number of years considered. We find that our mobility estimates do not converge to a constant over time so the starting year chosen for the analysis matters. We conclude that income mobility ...