The EU experience with youth unemployment has changed over recent years with the launchand re-launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna process. A dramatic shift has takenplace from the 1990s emphasis on labour market flexibility as a tool to abate youth long termunemployment to the more...

We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse foruniversity admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists ofthree procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren","Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on waiting...

This paper investigates empirically whether decision makers are forward looking in dynamic strategic interactions. In particular, we test whether decision makers in multi-stage tournaments take heterogeneity induced changes of continuation values and the ability of their immediate opponent into...

We investigate how childhood cognitive skills affect strategic sophistication and adult outcomes. In particular, we emphasize the importance of childhood theory-of-mind as a cognitive skill. We collected experimental data from more than seven hundred children in a variety of strategic...

We experimentally investigate whether people generally perceive inheritance as effort-induced or luck-induced. By randomly matched two strangers in a lab setting, we test whether the sources of opportunity handed down from the 'testator' subjects determines later redistributive decisions among...

A growing literature has tried to measure the extent to which individuals have equal opportunities to acquire income. At the same time, policy makers have doubled down on efforts to go beyond income when measuring well- being. We attempt to bridge these two areas by measuring the extent to which...

Rising income inequalities are widely debated in public and academic discourse. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by proposing a new family of measures of unfair inequality. To do so, we acknowledge that inequality is not bad per se, but that its underlying sources need to be taken...

The concept of equality of opportunity (EOp) goes back to Roemer (1993, 1998) who argues that a society shall guarantee its members equal access to advantage regardless of their circumstances, while holding them responsible for turning that access into actual advantage by the application of...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and adopt a generalised version of Roemer's (1998) Equality of Opportunity (EOp) framework, which we call extended EOp, for analysing second-best optimal income taxation. Unlike the pure EOp criterion of Roemer (1998) the extended EOp criterion allows...

Using a unique dataset we study both the actual and self-perceived relationship between subjective well-being and income comparisons against a wide range of potential comparison groups, enabling us to investigate a broader range of questions than in previous studies. In questions inserted into a...