Birth rates differ strongly across European states, https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/55902despite the deep economic harmonisation process related to European integration. This study uses large scale administrative data from France and Germany to analyse and directly compare fertility patterns...

German social security records involve an indicator for part-time or full-time work. In 2011, the reporting procedure was changed suggesting that a fraction of worker recorded to be working full-time before the change were in fact part-time workers. This study develops a correction based on...

Despite the importance for socio-economic outcomes, there is an ongoing debate about the stability of personality traits over the life cycle. By disentangling age, period and cohort influences on personality traits, this paper adds to the existing empirical contributions, which often focus on...

We argue that in labor markets with central wage bargaining wage flexibility varies systematically across the wage distribution: local wage flexibility is more relevant for the upper part of the wage distribution, and flexibility of wages negotiated under central wage bargaining affects the...

In order to reduce unemployment, it is often recommended that industry-level wage bargaining in Germany should be replaced by a more decentralized system. This paper provides a critical assessment of the current wage bargaining institutions and reexamines the case for a more decentralized...

This paper examines critically the system of industry-level wage bargaining in Germany. More specifically, it shows that the importance of industry-level wage bargaining declines in Germany and that one major reason for this development is the highly restrictive institutional framework. However,...