It is well known that individual's risk attitudes are related to behavioral outcomes such as smoking, portfolio decisions, and also educational attainment, but there is barely any evidence on whether parental attitudes affect the educational attainment of dependent children. We add to this...

We present first estimates of rates of non-take-up for social assistance in Germany after the implementation of major social policy reforms in 2005. The analysis is based on a microsimulation model, which includes a detailed description of the German social assistance programme. Our findings...

This paper explores whether wage, employment and tenure outcomes of workers taking up a job subsidized by the German Federal Employment Agency differ by industry. The analysis utilizes administrative data and statistical matching tech-niques; it covers an observation period of 3.5 years. First,...

Unions are an important indicator of various measures of firm performance in Anglo-Saxon countries. The same holds for the German analogue of workplace unionism's the works council. Using the IAB Establishment Panel I examine the impact of works councils and shop-floor participation on further...

Focusing on the compression of wage cuts, many empirical studies find a high degree of downward nominal wage rigidity (DNWR). However, the resulting macroeconomic effects seem to be surprisingly weak. This contradiction can be explained within an intertemporal framework in which DNWR not only...

The rapidly growing literature on the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth has not univocally identified the real causal relationship yet. We argue that bivariate models, which analyze the causality at the level of the total economy, are not appropriate - especially in...

How can economic theory explain the reasons why consumers adopt innovations? Using the example of innovations in washing machines two approaches are compared. The first focuses in the manner of household production theory on changes in constraints without specifying preferences, leading to the...

NGOs could help scale up foreign aid efforts by mobilizing private donations. However, fundraising activities do not necessarily result in higher donations, and substitution effects between different sources of revenue may diminish the overall pool of NGOs' resources. This paper examines the...

Using state-level data for the period 1990 through 2007, we estimate the effect of legalizing medical marijuana on suicide rates. Our results suggest that the passage of a medical marijuana law is associated with an almost 5 percent reduction in the total suicide rate, an 11 percent reduction in...

This paper investigates immigrants' and natives' labour supply to the firm within a semi-structural approach based on a dynamic monopsony framework. Applying duration models to a large administrative employer-employee data set for Germany, we find that once accounting for unobserved worker...