In this paper we analyse to what extent movements in oil prices can help to explain business cycle fluctuations in Germany.We proceed in several steps:As a starting point we use a standard real business cycle model for the German economy and introduce energy as an additional factor in the...

The German practice of compelling weak students to repeat a class has come under heavy criticism recently. Many observers fear that this practice is, at best, useless or even counterproductive. However, little is known so far on the consequences of having to repeat a class, as compared to be...

In 1996 free choice of health insurers has been introduced in the German social health insurance scheme. Competition between insurers was supposed to increase efficiency. A crucial precondition for effective competition among health insurers is that consumers search for lower-priced health...

Having faced high unemployment rates for more than a decade, the German government implemented a comprehensive set of labour market reforms during the period 2003-2005. This paper describes the economic and institutional context of the German labour market before and after these so-called Hartz...

This study investigates the influence of urban form on automobile travel using travel-diary data from Germany. Two dimensions of car use are considered: the discrete decision to own a car and the continuous decision of distance traveled. Because these decisions are likely to be influenced by...

This paper investigates gender differences in smoking behavior using data from the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP). We develop a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method for count data models which allows to isolate the part of the gender differential in the number of cigarettes daily smoked that...