This paper studies the persistence of a large, unexpected, and regionally very unevenly distributed population shock, the inflow of eight million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II. Using detailed census data from 1939 to 1970, we show that the shock had a...

In urban areas, there is considerable neighbourhood-level variation in population characteristics. Using Dortmund as a case study we analyse whether and to what extent rents, housing prices and segregation dynamics corresponded with demographic ageing in urban neighbourhoods between 2007 and...

Does pro-immigrant legislation improve financial inclusion? This paper examines how granting safe havens for immigrants impacts Hispanics' financial behavior and discrimination against them in the U.S. mortgage market. To identify the effect, I take advantage of the staggered implementation of...

In contrast to previous research, I hypothesize that residential segregation patterns do not only result from an individual's perception of different ethnicities, but is rather affected by housing market interactions and socioeconomic endowment, like income and education. I implement a...

This paper deals with the question of whether migrants in Germany pay a rent premium for apartments of comparable quality and neighborhood characteristics. We use a twostep selection-correction model augmented by a control function to account for nonrandom neighborhood choice. The estimation...

Credit default is a dramatic consequence of disadvantageous private financial decisions. Using regression methods which eliminate spatial autocorrelation at the level of 1 km2 grids and further identification problems, we observe considerable and reinforcing residential segregation between...

Residential choice does not only depend on properties of the dwelling, neighborhood amenities and affordability, but is also affected by the population composition within a neighbourhood. All these attributes are capitalised in the house price. Empirically, it is not easy to disentangle the...

The rising concentration of low-income households and ethnic minorities has become an important policy issue in Germany. The Ruhr Area is particularly interesting, because it is one of the largest conurbations in Europe and experienced radical structural changes in the past, which are connected...

We estimate the effect of language training on subsequent employment and wages of immigrants under essential heterogeneity. The identifying variation is based on regional differences in language training availability that we use to instrument endogenous participation. Estimating marginal...

This paper documents a positive impact of cultural diversity and cultural similarity on rental prices of the German districts for the years between 2004 and 2013. On the one hand, an increase of the Herfindahl index as a measure for cultural diversity of 0.1 would increase rents by over 12...