We investigate how worries in Germany change across time and age, drawing on both closed-ended questions (which typically list a number of worry items) and open-ended questions answered in text format. We find that relevant world events influence worries. For example, worries about peace peaked...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

The paper deals with measurement error, and its potentially distorting role, in information on industry and professional status collected by labour force surveys. The focus of our analyses is on inconsistent information on these employment characteristics resulting from yearly transition...

In this paper data from a survey of 1,771 inmates conducted in 31 German prisons provide microeconometric evidence on the relationship between individual anticipated labour market opportunities and the perceived probability of future recidivism. Results show that inmates with poor labour market...

Labor market statistics are critical for assessing and understanding economic development. In practice, widespread variation exists in how labor statistics are measured in household surveys in low-income countries. Little is known whether these differences have an effect on the labor statistics...

We analyse response patterns to an important survey of school children, exploiting rich auxiliary information on respondents' and non-respondents' cognitive ability that is correlated both with response and the learning achievement that the survey aims to measure. The survey is the Programme for...

Critics of international student comparisons argue that results may be influenced by differences in the extent to which countries adequately sample their entire student populations. In this research note, we show that larger exclusion and non-response rates are related to better country average...

Although a broad field of literature on incentive theory exists, employer-provided tangible goods (hereafter called benefits) have so far been neglected by economic research. A remarkable exception is an empirical study by Oyer (2008). In our study, we test some of his findings by drawing on a...

Theory points to a potential trade-off between two main school assignment mechanisms; Boston and Deferred Acceptance (DA). While DA is strategy-proof and gives a stable matching, Boston might outperform DA in terms of ex-ante efficiency. We quantify the (dis)advantages of the mechanisms by using...

Unlike most of the earlier U.S. time-use surveys, the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) does not collect information on secondary activities. It does, however, include a set of questions asking respondents to identify times when a child under 13 was "in your care." The goal of these questions is...