The German Microcensus (MC) is a large scale rotating panel survey over three years. The MC is attractive for longitudinal analysis over the entire participation duration because of the mandatory participation and the very high case numbers (about 200 thousand respondents). However, as a...

Nonresponse in surveys may result in a distortion of the distribution of interest. In a panel survey the participation behavior in later waves is different from the participation behavior at the start. With register data that cover also the information for non-respondents one can observe a fade...

We propose a new view of initial nonresponse bias in longitudinal surveys. Under certain conditions, an initial bias may "fade-away" over consecutive waves. This effect is discussed in a Markovian framework. A general contraction theorem for time inhomogeneous Markov chains is presented. The...