The publication of the OECD report on the PISA 2000 study induced a public outcry in Germany.On average,German students participating in this standardized test performed considerably below the OECD average and substantially worse than those of other European countries,like Finland or...

Over the last year the German government has introduced a comprehensive set of labor market policy reforms, the so-called Hartz reforms, which aim at a significant reduction of unemployment. To this end, (a) many of the existing instruments of active labor market policy are modified...

It is frequently hypothesized that environmental management systems (EMSs) may improve a firm's environmental performance. Whether or not this hypothesis is true is as important from the perspective of environmental policy as questions relating to the relevant incentives for (1) a firm's...

This paper investigates whether and to what extent immigrants in Germany are integrated into German society by utilizing a variety of qualitative information and subjective data collected in the 1999 wave of the German Socio- Economic Panel (GSOEP).To this end, leisure-time activities and...

The German practice of compelling weak students to repeat a class has come under heavy criticism recently. Many observers fear that this practice is, at best, useless or even counterproductive. However, little is known so far on the consequences of having to repeat a class, as compared to be...

Determining the optimal age at which a child should enter school is a controversial topic in education policy. In particular, German policy makers, pedagogues, parents, and teachers have since long discussed whether the traditional, established age of school entry at 6 years remains appropriate....

This paper analyses the duration of child poverty in Germany. In our sample, we observe the entire income history from the individuals? birth to their coming of age at age 18.Therefore we are able to analyze dynamics in and out of poverty for the entire population of children, whether they...

Using a panel of household travel diary data collected in Germany between 1997 and 2005, this study assesses the effectiveness of fuel efficiency improvements by econometrically estimating the rebound effect, describing the extent to which higher efficiency causes additional travel.Following a...