We use data from the 1996 wave of the European Community Household Panel to present and compare the weekly number of hours mothers of children less than 16 years of age reported looking after children in nine European countries in 1996. In addition, we explore to what extent cross-country...

Since the 2008 Lehman bankruptcy, it is clearly shown that global economic and financial crises present major challenges to private households, requiring from them, a high level of shock absorption capacity. According to the old adage, "Do not put all the eggs in one basket", resilience depends,...

This study questions the popular stereotype that women are more risk averse than men in their financial investment decisions. The analysis is based on micro-level data from large-scale surveys of private households in five European countries. In our analysis of investment decisions, we directly...

The gender wage gap is a persistent labor market phenomenon. Most research focuses on the determinants of these wage differences. We contribute to this literature by exploring a different research question: if wages of women are systematically lower than male wages, what are the distributional...

This paper aims to verify results of the innovative study on gender identity for the USA by Bertrand et al. (2015) for Germany. They found that women who would earn more than their husbands distort their labor market outcome in order not to violate traditional gender identity norms. Using data...

I quantify the perceived changes in hourly wage rates associated with working different hours on the same job for a representative sample of female workers. While part-time working women expect significant hourly wage gains from switching to full-time work - 7% on average - full-time workers...

In this paper, the process of productivity convergence is investigated for the enlarged European Union using regional (NUTS-2) data. The Solow model extended by human capital is employed as a workhorse. Alternative strategies are proposed to control for spatial effects. All specifications...

We investigate hysteresis and persistence behaviour in the course of unemployment in EU countries and US states by means of first and second generation panel unit root tests. While the former tests assume independent cross sections, the latter control for dependencies. The first generation tests...

We examine real business cycle convergence for 41 euro area regions and 48 US states. Results obtained by a panel model with spatial correlation indicate that the relevance of common business cycle factors is rather stable over the past two decades in the euro area and the US. Ongoing business...

This paper examines the significance of different fundamental regimes by applying various monetary models of the exchange rate to one of the politically most important exchange rates, the exchange rate of the US dollar vis-à-vis the euro (the DM). We use monthly data from 1975:01 to 2007:12....