In belligerent countries, male-to-female sex ratios at birth increased during and shortly after the two world wars. These rises still defy explanation. Several causes have been suggested (but not tested) in the literature. Many of these causes are proximate in nature, reflecting behavioral...

Over the last decades fertility rates have decreased in most developed countries, while female labour force participation has increased strongly over the same time period. To shed light on the relationship between women’s fertility and employment decisions, we analyse their transitions to the...

This paper examines the significance of different fundamental regimes by applying various monetary models of the exchange rate to one of the politically most important exchange rates, the exchange rate of the US dollar vis-à-vis the euro (the DM). We use monthly data from 1975:01 to 2007:12....

This paper investigates cost and profit efficiency of German hospitals. More specifically, it deals with the question how hospital efficiency varies with ownership, patient structure,and other exogenous factors, which are neither inputs nor outputs of the production process.We conduct a...

We identify the causal effect of compulsory military service on conscripts’ subsequent labor-market outcomes by exploiting the regression-discontinuity design of the military draft in Germany during the 1950s. Unbiased estimates of military service on lifetime earnings, wages, and employment...

Interaction effects capture the impact of one explanatory variable x1 on the marginal effect of another explanatory variable x2. To explore interaction effects, so-called interaction terms x1x2 are typically included in estimation specifications. While in linear models the effect of a marginal...

Using data from the German SOEP, this paper analyses whether there have been (a) any significant changes in poverty rates and poverty intensities before and after the Hartz IV reforms and (b) whether there have been observable changes in the effect of employment in reducing the threat or...

This paper shows that patients with private health insurance (PHI) are being offered significantly shorter waiting times than patients with statutory health insurance (SHI) in German acute hospital care. This behavior may be driven by the higher expected profitability of PHI relative to SHI...

The objective of this paper is to identify selected forces of the decrease in the number of avoidable deaths from ischaemic heart diseases (IHD) in West and East Germany from 1996 to 2004. Our main result reveals that the number of intracardiac catheter facilities,which are an important...

This paper examines the role of social assistance payments (SAP or Sozialhilfe) in determining levels of life satisfaction in Germany using the SOEP 1995-2004. We find strong evidence that individuals in Germany are negatively influenced by increased SAP payments controlling for income, whether...