This paper analyzes whether immigrant families facing credit constraints adopt a family investment strategy wherein, upon arrival, an immigrant spouse invests in host country-specific human capital while the other partner works to finance the family's current consumption. Using data for West...

In this paper we develop a discrete model of optimal taxation of married couples and empirically discuss the optimality of income taxation for this group. To this end, we derive the social welfare function which guarantees that joint taxation of married couples is optimal. We will contrast this...

Using data on the valuation of Christmas gifts received by students in different fields at a German university, we investigate whether the endowment effect differs between students of economics and other respondents and whether it varies with the market price of the object under consideration....

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...

While there is little doubt that the probability of poor health increases with age, and that less healthy people face a more difficult situation on the labour market, the precise relationship between facing the risks of health deterioration and labour market instability is not well understood....

In this paper we develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between the two outcomes. We identify the effect of financial incentives on the employment and fertility decision by exploiting variation in the tax and transfer...

This paper examines the effect of copayments on doctor visits using the German health care reform of 2004 as a natural experiment. In January 2004, copayments of 10 euros for the first doctor visit in each quarter have been introduced for all adults in the statutory health insurance. Individuals...

We assess the labour supply effects of two 'making work pay' reforms in Germany. We provide evidence in favour of policies that distinguish between low effort and low productivity by targeting individuals with low wages rather than individuals with low earnings. In assessing the policies we...

We identify the causal effect of compulsory military service on conscripts' subsequent labor-market outcomes by exploiting the regression-discontinuity design of the military draft in Germany during the 1950s. Unbiased estimates of the effect of military service on lifetime earnings, wages, and...

This paper investigates the transferability of human capital across countries and the contribution of imperfect human capital portability to the explanation of the immigrant-native wage gap. Using data for West Germany, our results reveal that, overall, education and labor market experience...