This paper presents estimates of the unification bonus for East Germans over the period 1991 to 1998. The unification bonus is defined as the discounted value of the difference between a person?s actual income and his or her counterfactual real income stream forecast for a hypothetical...

We investigate expectations concerning future job loss in the former German Democratic Republic shortly before the economic, monetary and social union in July 1990. In order to model these expectations, we take detailed account of individual heterogeneity, the availability and interpretation of...

We investigate the plans of individual workers concerning future self-employment in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) shortly before the economic, monetary and social union in June/July 1990. Our data base is the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) East. We find that the desire to...

Does the information provided by mass media have the power to persistently affect individual beliefs about the drivers of success in life? To answer this question empirically, this contribution exploits a natural experiment on the reception of West German television in the former German...