Studies on the underlying mechanisms of social mobility commonly find that half of the intergenerational earnings persistence remains unexplained. Focusing on the phenomenon of overqualification, this study examines a transmission channel that might operate beyond the mechanisms previously...

On Wikipedia, the largest online encyclopedia, editors who contribute to the same articles and exchange comments on articles' talk pages work in collaborative manner engaging in communication about their work. Thus they can be considered as peers who are likely to influence each other. In this...

The wage effects of fixed-term contracts (FTCs) are analysed with the GSOEP for West Germany. Different estimators which take into account selection bias are used. It is shown that propensity score matching estimators which are usually applied for the evaluation of active labour market...

This paper examines the wage effects of different types of career interruptions. We consider the timing and duration of non-employment spells by exploiting an administrative data set of German social security accounts (IAB employment sample) supplemented with information on the employees? entire...

Gregariousness is an important aspect of human life with implications for labour market outcomes. The paper examines, to the best of our knowledge for the first time for Germany, gregariousness and social interaction at the workplace and associated wage differentials. Our empirical findings with...

This paper analyzes how high-ability students respond to different indicators of university quality when applying for a university. Are some quality dimensions of a ranking, e.g. research reputation or mentoring more important than others? I estimate a random utility model using administrative...

Applying a differences-in-differences strategy, I study the decentralization of university admission as a natural experiment. Is the centralized or decentralized procedure better suited to match prospective students to universities? The analysis uses administrative data on all students within...

Much of the debate on industrialization and displacement has, so far, focused on the optimum compensation for affected households. Our recently concluded study, comprising of a sample of 1017 households including 630 affected (displaced and land acquired) and 387 unaffected households, looks at...

This paper investigates the relationship between the gender wage gap, the choice of training occupation, and occupational mobility. We use longitudinal data for young workers with apprenticeship training in West Germany. Workers make occupational career choices early during their careers and...

A comprehensive descriptive analysis of gender wage differences over a long time period is missing for West Germany. Using an empirical approach which takes into account explicitely changes of wage distributions for both males and females as well as life-cycle and birth cohort effects, we go...