Exploiting the age-at-enrollment policies in 16 German states as exogenous source of variation, I examine whether the schooling of the oldest child in a migrant household affects parents' integration. My analysis links administrative records on primary school enrollment cutoff dates with micro...

This paper investigates the causal effect of education on life satisfaction, exploring effect heterogeneity along employment status. We use exogenous variation in compulsory schooling requirements and the build-up of new, academically more demanding schools, shifting educational attainment...

Men at the bottom quintile of the German male earnings distribution had lower average earnings in 2019 than in 2001. In contrast, female earnings have increased throughout the distribution. What explains these diverging trends and how did they translate into changes in net income? Data from the...

Little is known about the individual location behaviour of self-employed entrepreneurs. This paper investigates the geographical mobility behaviour of self-employed entrepreneurs, as compared to employees, thereby shedding new light onto the place embeddedness of self-employment. It examines...

Previous estimates of unfair inequality of opportunity (IOp) are only lower bounds because of the unobservability of the full set of endowed circumstances beyond the sphere of individual responsibility. In this paper, we suggest a new estimator based on a fixed effects panel model which...

Before the 90s, men's employment careers in East and West Germany were quite similar, despite their widely differing institutional settings. Before reunification, employment biographies were mainly dominated by full-time employment in both East and West. After 1989 the GDR was incorporated into...

Despite numerous studies on skill development,we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality, time...

Identity can be an important driving force for educational performance. Immigrants and their children face the challenge of identifying with their host country's culture. This paper examines whether young immigrants and their children who identify stronger with the German culture are more likely...

Theory suggests that subjective well-being is affected by income comparisons and adaptation to income. Empirical tests of the effects often rely on self-constructed measures from survey data. This paper shows that results can be highly sensitive to simple parameter changes. Using large-scale...