Disconnectedness among youth can have several dimensions. From a socio-economic viewpoint, failure in school, unemployment and the lack of an intimate relationship are among the most important ones. In our samples from SOEP youth questionnaires, approximately 13% of young people in Germany...

Experimental evidence reveals that there is a strong willingness to trust and to act in both positively and negatively reciprocal ways. So far it is rarely analyzed whether these variables of social cognition influence everyday decision making behavior. We focus on entrepreneurs who are...

This paper systematically investigates whether different kinds of personality characteristics influence entrepreneurial development. On the basis of a large, representative household panel survey, we examine the extent to which the Big Five traits and further personality characteristics, which...

This paper systematically investigates whether different kinds of personality characteristics influence entrepreneurial development. On the basis of a large, representative household panel survey, we examine the extent to which the Big Five traits and further personality characteristics, which...

Gregariousness is an important aspect of human life with implications for labour market outcomes. The paper examines, to the best of our knowledge for the first time for Germany, gregariousness and social interaction at the workplace and associated wage differentials. Our empirical findings with...

This study provides empirical evidence for the economic rationality of wage rigidities. Theoretically wage rigidities can result from contracts, implicit contracts, from efficiency wages and from insider-outsider behaviour. Based on a survey of 801 firms strong support has been found for...

This paper examines the evolution of returns to education in the West German labour market over the last two decades. During this period, graduates from the period of educational expansion entered the labour market and an upgrading of the skill structure took place. In order to tackle the issues...

Self-productivity is a crucial feature in the process of skill formation. It means that skills and health acquired at one stage in the life cycle enhance skills and health formation at later stages. This paper presents an empirical investigation of self-productivity in early childhood in...

This paper investigates the wage convergence between East German workers and their West German counterparts after reunification. Our research is based on a comparison of three groups of workers defined as stayers, migrants and commuters to West Germany, who lived in East Germany in 1989, with...

Risk attitudes have an impact on not only the decision to become an entrepreneur but also the survival and failure rates of entrepreneurs. Whereas recent research underpins the theoretical proposition of a positive correlation between risk attitudes and the decision to become an entrepreneur,...