This paper provides unheard direct evidence that comparisons exert a significant effect onsubjective well-being. It also evaluates the relative importance of different types ofbenchmarks...

This paper investigates certain issues of economic and ethnic segregation from theperspective of children in the three metropolitan regions of Sweden by using a relative newoperationalization of the neighbourhood concept. Neighbourhoods are clustered bypopulation share of visible immigrants in...

It is puzzling that people feel quite unhappy when they become unemployed, while at thesame time active labor market policies are needed to bring unemployed back to work morequickly. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigate whether there isindeed such a puzzle. First, we...

While results are starting to emerge, not much is known yet about the dynamics of the labormarkets of the former Eastern economies, especially in the context of the current FinancialCrisis. Arguably, this is mainly due to paucity of (panel) data. By examining labor markettransitions, earnings...

In view of rising wage inequality and increasing poverty, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of the introduction of a nationwide legal minimum wage of 7.5 per hour on the basis of a...

High rates of unemployment entail substantial costs to the working population in terms of reduced subjective well-being. This paper studies the importance of individual economic security, in particular job security, in workers´ well-being by exploiting sector-specific institutional differences...

This paper studies the mental distress caused by bereavement. The largest emotional lossesare from the death of a spouse; the second-worst in severity are the losses from the death ofa child; the third-worst is the death of a parent...

Using fixed effects ordered logit estimation, we investigate the relationship between part-timework and working hours satisfaction; job satisfaction; and life satisfaction. We account forinterdependence within the family using data on partnered men and women from the BritishHousehold Panel Survey...

This study develops and estimates a model of the naturalization process in the US. The model is based on both the characteristics of immigrants and features of their countries of origin. The empirical analysis is based on the 2000 US Census...

This paper provides an introduction and overview of my research on the Economics of Language. The approach is that language skills among immigrants and native-born linguistic minorities are a form of human capital. There are costs and benefits associated with this characteristic embodied in the...