Depression affects the way that people process information and make decisions, including those involving risk and uncertainty. Our objective is to analyze the way that depressive episodes shape risk preferences and risk-taking behaviors. We are the first to address this issue using large-scale,...

Overindebted private households have created economic and political concern. Using measures of relative (over-) indebtedness which relate household income and debt services to different concepts of subsistence levels, this paper investigates whether severe household indebtedness is driven by...

We analyze if technological progress and the change in the occupational structure have improved women's position in the labour market. We show that women increasingly work in non-routine manual and in interactive occupations. However, the observed narrowing of the gender wage gap is entirely...

While various empirical studies have found negative growth-effects of natural disasters, little is yet known about the microeconomic channels through which disasters might affect short- and especially long-term growth. This paper contributes to filling this gap in the literature by studying how...

Im fünften Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung wurde darauf hingewiesen, dass die Datenlage im Bereich hoher Vermögen unzureichend sei (BMAS, 2017). Zur Verbesserung der Datenlage haben wir eine neue Sampling-Strategie entwickelt und im Feld implementiert. In der gezogenen...

We analyze the effect of household indebtedness on different health outcomes using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1999-2009. To establish a causal effect, we rely on (a) fixed-effects methods, (b) a subsample of constantly employed individuals, and (c) lagged debt variables to...

Based on the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) and the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP), we show that household consumption drops after a child moves out of a household, while at the same time, per capita consumption increases significantly. Parents approximately upgrade...

This paper explores the relationship between risk attitude and asset diversification in household portfolios. We first examine the impact of manifested risk aversion on the total number of distinct assets held in a portfolio (naive diversification). The second part of the paper focuses on a more...

Equivalence Scales are a tool for removing the heterogeneity of household sizes in the measurement of inequality, and affect poverty assessments and poverty lines. We address the disadvantage that poor households may suffer due to their reduced ability to share goods within the household. This...

Im fünften Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung wurde darauf hingewiesen, dass die Datenlage im Bereich hoher Vermögen unzureichend sei (BMAS, 2017). Zur Verbesserung der Datenlage haben wir eine neue Sampling-Strategie entwickelt und im Feld implementiert. In der gezogenen...