We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty...

Based on new, exceptionally informative and large German linked employer-employee administrative data, we investigate the question whether the omission of important control variables in matching estimation leads to biased impact estimates of typical active labour market programs for the...

We provide an explanation for the common finding that the effect of retirement on life satisfaction is negligible. For this we use subjective well-being measures for life and domains of life satisfaction that are available in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and show that the effect of...

This paper analyzes savings and asset holdings of immigrants in relation to their return plans. We argue that savings and asset accumulation may be affected by return plans of immigrants. Further, the way savings and assets are held in the home- and host country may also be related to future...

Labor market programs may affect unemployed individuals' behavior before they enroll. Such ex ante effects may differ according to ethnic origin. We apply a novel method that relates self-reported perceived treatment rates and job search behavioral outcomes, such as the reservation wage or...

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective...

This paper evaluates a job search assistance program for unemployment insurance recipients. The assignment to the program is dynamic. We provide a discussion on dynamic treatment effects and identification conditions. In the empirical analyses we use administrative data from a unique...

The evaluation of labor market policies has become an important issue in many European countries. In recent years, many of them have opened their administrative databases for evaluation studies. The advantages of administrative data are straightforward: they are accurate, contain a large number...

In this paper we study the economic effects of risk attitudes, time preferences, trust and reciprocity while we compare natives and second generation migrants. We analyze an inflow sample into unemployment in Germany, and find differences between the two groups mainly in terms of risk attitudes...

This paper provides an evaluation of the status of migrant workers in Germany amidst the global financial crisis. Findings of the study are drawn from the latest available data on the labour market performance of native-German and non-German migrant workers as well as other socioeconomic...