What is the role of politics in shaping attitudes about appropriate roles for women in the family and the compatibility of work and motherhood? In this paper we argue that the German separation and later reunification produced a natural experiment to address this question. During the divided...

The cyclicality of real wages has important implications for the validity of competing business cycle theories. However, the empirical evidence on the aggregate level is inconclusive. Using a threshold vector autoregressive model for the US and Germany to condition the relationship between real...

We study what makes a research grant application successful in terms of ability, type of research, experience, and demographics of the applicants. But our main objective is to investigate whether public funding organizations support the teams that are most likely to undertake transformative or...

Immigrant children often face educational disadvantages that stem from their parents' decision- making. For example, in many immigrant-receiving countries, immigrants are less likely than the native-born to enrol their children in preschool programs or enable them access to higher education....

Culture is an under-studied determinant of health production and seldom measured. This paper empirically examines the persistence and association of health capital assessments of first and second-generation migrants with that of their ancestral countries. We draw on European data from 30...

This paper discusses the reasons for the dismal labor market performance of Germany over the last three decades along with potential remedies. It argues that labor market rigidities along with a generous welfare state in conjunction with certain changes in the economic environment are important...