External refereed essays

Moving to a Better Place? Residential Mobility among Families with Young Children in the Millennium Cohort Study

This paper assesses how far residential moves can result in improvement or deterioration of the housing and neighbourhood circumstances for families with young children. It uses data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study concentrating on the time between infancy and age 5, 2001 to 2006. First, we ask which families moved home and in what circumstances. We then examine how moving changed several aspects ...

Revisiting the Evidence for Cardinal Treatment of Ordinal Variables

Well-being (life satisfaction or happiness) is a latent variable that is impossible to observe directly. Moreover, it does not have a unit of measurement. Hence, survey questionnaires usually ask people to rate their well-being in different domains. The common practice of comparing well-being by means of averages or linear regressions ignores the fact that well-being is an ordinal variable. Since data ...

Changes in Life Satisfaction when Losing One's Spouse: Individual Differences in Anticipation, Reaction, Adaptation and Longevity in the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP)

Losing a spouse is among the most devastating events that may occur in people's lives. We use longitudinal data from 1,224 participants in the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) to examine (a) how life satisfaction changes with the experience of spousal loss; (b) whether socio-demographic factors and social and health resources moderate spousal loss-related changes in life satisfaction; and (c) ...

The Linked Employer–Employee Study of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP-LEE): Content, Design and Research Potential

Immer wieder Lohnnebenkosten: Anmerkungen zu deren verschiedenen Rollen

Der Beitrag setzt sich mit der Funktion von Lohnnebenkosten auseinander. Ihre besondere Rolle ist nur polit-ökonomisch erklärbar; (makro-)ökonomisch betrachtet sind sie schlicht und einfach nur ein Teil der Lohnkosten. Arbeitgeber- und Arbeitnehmerbeiträge rechtfertigen, dass beide Seiten in den Selbstverwaltungsgremien der Sozialversicherungen vertreten sind. Hierdurch wird die Stabilität der Sozialversicherungen ...

Distributive and Poverty-Reducing Effects of In-Kind Housing Benefits in Europe: With a Case Study for Germany

While cash housing benefits are generally included in household disposable income, the effect of social housing is not accounted for. This may provide a misleading picture of the impact of overall housing policies on inequality and poverty, as countries use different policies to help households meet their housing expenses. In this article, we present the first comprehensive study of the impact of in-kind ...

Increased Instruction Hours and the Widening Gap in Student Performance

Do increased instruction hours improve the performance of all students? Using PISA scores of students in ninth grade, we analyse the effect of a German education reform that increased weekly instruction hours by two hours (6.5 percent) over almost five years. In the additional time, students are taught new learning content. On average, the reform improves student performance. However, treatment effects ...

Who Bears the Burden of Social Security Contributions in Germany? Evidence from 35 Years of Administrative Data

This paper provides evidence on the question of who bears the burden of social security contributions (SSC) in Germany over a long-term horizon. Following Alvaredo et al. (De Econ, 2017) we exploit kinks in the budget set generated by a drop in the marginal SSC rate at earnings caps for health and long-term care insurance. These concave kinks lead to discontinuities in the distributions of gross earnings, ...

Judicial Behavior and Devolution at the Privy Council

In this article, we study judicial behavior at the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC). British judges in general, and British high court judges in particular, are perceived to be independent and isolated from political pressure and interference. Furthermore, these judges tend to show a particularly high rate of consensus. This has led many scholars to consider that, contrarily to what holds ...

Do Private Utilities Outperform Local Government-Owned Utilities? Evidence from German Retail Electricity

Against the background of remunicipalisation trends in European public service sectors, this paper estimates firm-level productivity for German electricity retailers and tests whether the ownership type has a significant impact on productivity. We specify a production function for the retail sector with labour and external services as main inputs, which is estimated using a control function approach. ...

Einkommensunterschiede in der Mortalität in Deutschland – Ein empirischer Erklärungsversuch

In dieser Studie gehen wir der Frage nach, welche Faktoren die einkommensbedingten Unterschiede in der Mortalität erklären können. Auf der Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) werden ereignisanalytische Modelle der Mortalität ab dem Alter 65 geschätzt, die Auskunft über den Mediatoreffekt von acht Faktorenbündeln geben. Als Mediatoren zwischen Einkommen zum Alter 65 und Mortalität werden Bildung, ...

Terminal Decline in Well-Being: The Role of Multi-Indicator Constellations of Physical Health and Psychosocial Correlates

Well-being is often relatively stable across adulthood and old age, but typically exhibits pronounced deteriorations and vast individual differences in the terminal phase of life. However, the factors contributing to these differences are not well understood. Using up to 25-year annual longitudinal data obtained from 4,404 now-deceased participants of the nationwide German Socio-Economic Panel Study ...

Vor dem Brexitus: Folgen des britischen EU-Referendums für Ostmitteleuropa

Die britische Regierung will im Jahr 2017 den Austritt aus der EU erklären. Dies wird Folgen für die EU-Staaten Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas haben. Die Abwertung des Pfunds nach dem britischen Referendum hat bereits den Wert der Überweisungen von Arbeitsmigranten verringert. Erheblich wären die Folgen, sollte Großbritannien die Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit einschränken. Auch auf den Handel und in geringerem ...

Nur geringer haushaltspolitischer Spielraum trotz hoher Überschüsse

Public budgets in Germany developed favorable during the last years. Currently there is a broad discussion on how to spend unexpected budget surpluses: tax reductions and a various number of spending purposes are on the agenda. Many of the proposals overlook that existing surpluses partly reflect special developments and are, thus, only temporary. This part of surpluses indicates no scope for tax reductions ...

Die Integration Geflüchteter in der Vergangenheit: Spracherwerb und Arbeitsmarkteinbindung

Aktuell besteht eine der zentralen politischen Aufgaben in der Integration von Geflüchteten in die Gesellschaft. Integration setzt sich aus Teilprozessen, wie dem Erlernen der deutschen Sprache oder der Arbeitsmarkteinbindung, zusammen. In diesem Bericht betrachten wir diese Teilprozesse für Geflüchtete, die vor allem zwischen 1990 und 2010, nach Deutschland einreisten.

Compressing Instruction Time into Fewer Years of Schooling and the Impact on Student Performance

Is it possible to compress instruction time into fewer school years without lowering education levels? A fundamental reform in Germany reduced the length of academic track schooling by one year, while increasing instruction hours in the remaining school years to provide students with a very similar core curriculum and the same overall instruction time. Using aggregated administrative data on the full ...

Start-up Costs of Thermal Power Plants in Markets with Increasing Shares of Variable Renewable Generation

The emerging literature on power markets with high shares of variable renewable energy sources suggests that the costs of more frequent start-ups of thermal power plants may become an increasing concern. Here we investigate how this develops in Germany, where the share of variable renewables is expected to grow from 14% in 2013 to 34% in 2030. We show that the overall number of start-ups grows by 81%, ...

Network Expansion to Mitigate Market Power

Constrained transmission capacity in electricity networks may give generators the possibility to game the market by specifically causing congestion and thereby appropriating excessive rents. Investment in network capacity can ameliorate such behavior by reducing the potential for strategic behavior. However, modeling Nash equilibria between generators, which explicitly account for their impact on the ...

Housework Allocation in Germany: The Role of Income and Gender Identity

ObjectivesThis article analyzes how couples allocate housework against the backdrop of three questions: (1) Does an individual's income—both in absolute and relative terms—influence his or her contribution to housework? (2) If so, does themagnitude of this influence differ by gender? and (3) How important are traditional gender roles on housework allocation?MethodsWe apply panel regression techniques ...

Associations between Neighborhood Characteristics, Well-Being and Health Vary over the Life Course

Background: Neighborhood characteristics are important determinants of individual health and well-being. For example, characteristics such as noise and pollution affect health directly, while other characteristics affect health and well-being by either providing resources (e.g. social capital in the neighborhood), which individuals can use to cope with health problems, or limiting the use thereof (e.g. ...