We analyze the role of risk-sharing institutions in transitions to modern economies. Transitions requires individual-level risk-taking in pursuing productivity-enhancing activities including using and developing new knowledge. Individual-level, idiosyncratic risk implies that distinct...

In this paper we investigate the effect of labour income uncertainty on the probability of home ownership in Germany and Spain. This study is motivated by two facts. Firstly, theoretical models provide ambiguous results in this issue. Secondly, there is limited previous empirical evidence and...

The theory of compensating wage differentials is generally accepted. Still, there has been no strong or even contrary evidence for compensating wage differentials in Germany so far. Estimating wage regressions with data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) within individually perceived...

This paper investigates whether risk preferences explain how individuals are sorted into occupations with different earnings variability. We exploit data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which contains a subjective assessment of willingness to take risks whose behavioral relevance has been...

This paper provides evidence that subjective measures of individual well being can be used to study the impact of income uncertainty from an ex ante point of view. Two different measures of subjective well being are under study: Satisfaction with household income and the income evaluation...

This paper provides a cross-country comparison of life-cycle and business-cycle fluctuations in the dispersion of household-level wage innovations. We draw our inference from household panel data sets for the US, the UK, and Germany. First, we find that household characteristics explain about...

We present a semiparametric method to estimate group-level dispersion, which is particularly effective in the presence of censored data. We apply this procedure to obtain measures of occupation-specific wage dispersion using top-coded administrative wage data from the German IAB Employment...

There is a large body of literature analyzing the relationship between objective economic conditions and voting behavior, but there is very little evidence of how perceived economic insecurity impacts on political preferences. Using seventeen years of household panel data from the German...

Economists have concerns about the firing cost implications of mandated severance plans. Analysis reveals that predicted severance plan consequences depend critically on the precise structure of the plan. Whether governments mandate (i) severance insurance plans or (ii) severance savings plans...

This paper investigates the effects of intensified screening of disability insurance benefit applications. A large-scale experiment was setup where in 2 of the 26 Dutch regions case workers of the disability insurance administration were instructed to screen applications more intense. The...