To insure policyholders against contemporaneous health expenditure shocks and future reclassification risk, long-term health insurance constitutes an alternative to community-rated short-term contracts with an individual mandate. In this paper, we study the German long-term health insurance...

This paper analyses the relationship between locus of control (LOC) and the demand for supplementary health insurance. Drawing on longitudinal data from Germany, we find robust evidence that individuals having an internal LOC are more likely to take up supplementary private health insurance...

This paper considers a modification of the standard Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model of epidemic that allows for different degrees of compulsory as well as voluntary social distancing. It is shown that the fraction of population that self-isolates varies with the perceived probability...

The aim of this paper is to introduce a new model selection mechanism for cross sectional spatial models. This method is more fexible than the approach proposed by Florax et al. (2003) since it controls for spatial dependence as well as for spatial heterogeneity. In particular, Bayesian and...

Knowledge and technological change are often assumed to be the driving forces for long run economic growth. Regions with a higher level of knowledge compared to other regions exhibit a higher per-capita income on average. Agglomeration effects can lead to a steady increase of income and widen...

During the last two decades many countries have reformed their welfare systems with the aim of shifting labor market policies from passive benefit receipt towards increased job search and work requirements. As part of this shift benefit sanctions are increasingly being used in the activation...

Empirical work on continuing training in Germany provides surprisingly divergent evidence on the incidence of training. This makes comparison of econometric analyses of the impact of training on labour market outcomes difficult. Three large German data sets are used here to bring to light the...

Consumption based equivalence scales are estimated by applying the extended partially linear model (EPLM) to the 1998 Income and Consumption Survey (EVS) carried out in Germany. In this model the equivalence scales are identified by virtue of nonlinearities in household demand. Therefore, the...

This paper establishes that individuals with an internal locus of control, i.e., who believe that reinforcement in life comes from their own actions instead of being determined by luck or destiny, earn higher wages. However, this positive effect only translates into labor income via the channel...

We study the impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the spread and severity of Covid-19 in Germany. We combine data on county-by-day level on confirmed cases and deaths with information on local air quality and weather conditions and exploit short-term variation in the...