During the past two centuries, major technological breakthroughs such as the steam engine and electricity have acted as the catalysts for growth and have resulted in a marked increase in material well-being. The dominant technology today - information and communication technology (ICT) - does...

This paper investigates the evolution of wages and the recent tendency to rising wage inequality in Germany, based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for 1984 to 2004. Between 1984 and 1994 the wage distribution was fairly stable. Wage inequality started to increase around 1994 in...

Using a sample of high-school students from North Rhine-Westphalia, I find evidence that noncognitive skills significantly increase performance in school and success in professional life as well as happiness at age forty-three. Since test scores for cognitive skills are available for the...

In a two-period model with agent heterogeneity we analyze a pension reform toward a stronger link between contributions and benefits (as recently observed in several countries) in a pension system with a Bismarckian and a Beveridgian component. We show that such a policy change reduces the...