Formal and informal institutions are often viewed as complements or substitutes in empirical and theoretical works. However, no evidence of complementarities or substitutes is found in our empirical analysis of the interrelation between formal and informal decentralization across 64 provinces of...

We study management practices and performance of public sector organizations in Germany. For a representative sample of municipalities, we provide survey evidence for substantial het-erogeneity in the use of structured management practices. This heterogeneity is not driven by differences across...

We reassess the scarring" hypothesis by Clark et al. (2001), which states that unemployment experienced in the past reduces a person's current life satisfaction even after the person has become reemployed. Our results suggest that the scar from past unemployment operates via worsened...

We apply the Day Reconstruction Method to compare unemployed and employed people with respect to their subjective assessment of emotional affects, differences in the composition and duration of activities during the course of a day, and their self-reported life satisfaction. Employed persons are...

This study analyzes the effects of right-wing extremism on the well-being of immigrants based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1984 to 2006 merged with state-level information on election outcomes. The results show that the life satisfaction of immigrants is...

This article investigates the effects of an increase in paid parental leave -- twelve months instead of six months -- on children's long-term life satisfaction. The historical setting under study, namely the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), allows us to circumvent problems of selection...