We evaluate the effect of the federal students' financial assistance scheme (BAfoeG) on enrolment rates into higher education by exploiting the exogenous variation introduced through a discrete shift in the repayment regulations. Supported students had to repay the full loan until 1990....

This paper analyzes the distribution of technical efficiency within manufacturing industries. Using a representative sample of 35,000 firms in 255 industries of the German cost structure census, technical efficiencies are estimated by applying a deterministic frontier production function with...

Using micro-level panel data of about 35,000 firms from the German Cost Structure Census, we analyze the differences of technical efficiency across industries. Technical efficiency is estimated by firms' fixed effects. One striking result is that the distribution of technical efficiency across...

This paper explores the relationship between two well-established concepts of measuring individual well-being: the concept of happiness, i.e. self-reported level of satisfaction with income and life, and relative deprivation/satisfaction, i.e. the gaps between the individual's income and the...

Drawing on data from the twenty year long German Socioeconomic Panel Study, we show that partisanship is bounded. Almost every West German, East German, and immigrant never supports one or both of the major parties and most people vary support for their party by claiming no partisan preference....

Some people believe that the impact of population ageing on future health care ex-penditures will be quite moderate due to the high costs of dying. If not age per se but proximity to death determines the bulk of expenditures, a shift in the mortality risk to higher ages will not affect lifetime...