Young adults are the most hit by the current economic crisis. This can be observed in high youth unemployment rates in countries like Spain. At the same time fertility is relatively low in the most concerned countries whereas those in their fertile phase experience high unemployment rates. Based...

This paper presents results from a randomized evaluation of a home visiting program for disadvantaged first time mothers and their families implemented in three German federal states. At the end of the first year of the program, children in home visited families perform significantly better than...

Using an epidemiological approach, we study the cultural influence on fertility outcomes of first- and second-generation female immigrants based on a 1% sample of the German population. We proxy for culture in the country of origin using total fertility rates from the year of migration, survey...

This paper studies the causal effects of graduating from university with an honors degree on subsequent labor market outcomes. While a rich body of literature has focused on estimating returns to human capital, few studies have analyzed returns at the very top of the education distribution. We...

Social networks are an important channel of information transmission in the labor market. In this paper investigate how displaced workers searching for new jobs benefit from information provided by their former coworkers. In line with the theoretical and empirical literature we find that the...

We analyze the effects of personal characteristics of 4239 political candidates on their performance in local elections in Germany. Our results show that a candidate's occupation plays a decisive role. Occupational effects can be explained by (a) an occupation's public reputation and (b) public...

We study the role of establishment-specific wage premiums in generating recent increases in West German wage inequality. Models with additive fixed effects for workers and establishments are fit in four sub-intervals spanning the period from 1985 to 2009. We show that these models provide a good...

This paper proposes a screening approach to explain why dating is associated with purchasing status products and conspicuous gift giving. A potential bride searching for a husband may seek to screen candidates whose income is only partially observable. Taking into account that she also bears...

We use a unique survey of Danes who have emigrated between 1987 and 2002 to study intra-family decision-making on international migration. Our survey reached 582 respondents with a Danish partner who was the same as before emigration. We model family decision-making in a bargaining framework and...

While many commentators perceive unemployment to be a key risk factor for intimate partner violence, the empirical evidence remains limited. We combine individual-level data from the British Crime Survey (BCS) with local labor market data to estimate the effects of total and gender-specific...