This study examines cognitive and non-cognitive skills and their transmission from parents to children as one potential candidate to explain the intergenerational link of socio-economic status. Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, we contrast the impact of...

This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany's sixteen federal states. We exploit this variation in the timing of state bans to identify the effect that...

This paper investigates the short-term effects of a reduction in the length of high school on students' personality traits using a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment. Starting in 2001, academic-track high school (Gymnasium) was reduced from nine...

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. Based on a large representative German dataset including IQ test scores and measures of non-cognitive skills, a restricted maximum likelihood model...

This study examines the immediate and intermediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of two high school graduation cohorts (2020 and 2021). We also investigate how changes in well-being at the transition to post-secondary education affect educational plans and outcomes. Our...

Economists consider personality traits to be stable, particularly throughout adulthood. However, evidence from psychological studies suggests that the stability assumption may not always be valid, as personality traits can respond to certain life events. Our paper analyzes whether and to what...

Using novel longitudinal data, this paper studies the short- and medium-term effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 on social trust of adolescents in Germany. Comparing adolescents who responded to our survey shortly before the start of the war with those who responded...

Reading skills are crucial for academic success and long-term educational attainment. However, children from disadvantaged backgrounds read less than their more privileged peers. This study assesses the impact of a randomized reading intervention conducted in Germany targeting 11-12-year-olds...

Using 1985-1999 data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) to analyze wages confirms the hypothesis that existing computer wage premiums are determined by individual ability or other unobserved individual characteristics rather than by productivity effects. While a rather large...

This study analyzes real wage cyclicality for male full-time workers within employer-employee matches in Germany over the period 1984-2004. Five different wage measures are compared: the standard hourly wage rate; hourly wage earnings including overtime and bonus pay; the effective wage, which...