The paper investigates maternity leave behavior in West Germany for females being employed between 1995 and 2006 using data from the German Socio Economic Panel. The observational study focuses on the investigation of individual and family-related covariate effects on the duration of maternity...

The paper investigates maternity leave behavior in West Germany for females being employed between 1995 and 2006 using data from the German Socio Economic Panel. The observational study focuses on the investigation of individual and family-related covariate effects on the duration of maternity...

This paper shows that there are severe measurement errors regarding the occupational affiliations in the German Socio-Economic Panel. These errors are traced back to the survey structure: in years where occupational information is gathered from the entire employed population instead of only from...

This paper shows that there are severe measurement errors regarding the occupational affiliations in the German Socio-Economic Panel. These errors are traced back to the survey structure: in years where occupational information is gathered from the entire employed population instead of only from...

This paper proposes a nonparametric test for common trends in semiparametric panel data models with fixed effects based on a measure of nonparametric goodness-of-fit (R^2). We first estimate the model under the null hypothesis of common trends by the method of profile least squares, and obtain...

After a summary of the main achievements in microfinance, the thesis provides an overview of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in developing countries between 2000 and 2009. A thorough study of microfinance in sub-Saharan Africa is also proposed. It serves as a prelude to the econometric analysis...