Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Short- and long-term participation tax rates and their impact on labor supply

Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to hamper employment. This paper investigates the importance of incentives inherent in the tax-benefit system for the individual decision to take up work. Using German microdata over the period 1993–2010, we find that recent reforms in Germany increased work incentives at the extensive margin measured by ...

Development of Top Incomes in Germany Since 2001

What share of total income in Germany is owned by the country’s top income earners and how has this share developed over the past decade? Answers to these questions can be found both in representative survey data such as the longitudinal Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and in administrative data on income taxation. After the statistics have been harmonized accordingly, it becomes clear there remain ...

Drivers of Participation Elasticities across Europe: Gender or Earner Role within the Household?

We compute participation tax rates across the EU and find that work disincentives inherent in tax-benefit systems largely depend on household composition and the individual's earner role within the household. We then estimate participation elasticities using an IV Group estimator that enables us to investigate the responsiveness of individuals to work incentives. We contribute to the literature ...

Children's Opportunities in Germany – An Application Using Multidimensional Measures

Single parents and unmarried couples are increasingly replacing the traditional nuclear family. This paper investigates if the greater variety in living arrangements contributes to increased resource disparities among children in Germany. Children in single parent families are disadvantaged in at least three dimensions decisive for their later achievements: material standard of living, parental education, ...

Wage Dispersion, Markets and Institutions: The Effects of the Boom in Education on the Wage Structure

Risk-Averse by Nation or by Religion? Some Insights on the Determinants of Individual Risk Attitudes

Egalitarianism and Competitiveness

Screening, Competition, and Job Design: Economic Origins of Good Jobs

High-performance work systems give workers more discretion, thereby increasing effort productivity but also shirking opportunities. We show experimentally that screening for work attitude and labor market competition are causal determinants of the viability of highperformance work systems, and we identify the complementarities between discretion, rent-sharing, and screening that render them profitable. ...

Health Effects on Children’s Willingness to Compete

The formation of human capital is important for a society’s welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children’s human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses on cognitive skills as determinants of human capital, it neglects non-cognitive skills. We analyze data from ...

Predicting the Trend of Well-Being in Germany: How Much Do Comparisons, Adaption and Sociability Matter?

Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the variation of subjective well-being experienced by Germans over the last two decades testing the role of some of the major correlates of people’s well-being. Our results suggest that the variation of Germans’ well-being between 1996 and 2007 is well predicted by changes over time of income, demographics and social capital. ...