Different empirical studies suggest that the structure of employment in the U.S. and Great Britain tends to polarise into "good" and "bad" jobs. We provide updated evidence that polarisation also occurred in Germany since the mid-1980s until 2008. Using representative panel data, we show that...

This paper is the first to analyze intergenerational economic mobility based on sibling correlations in permanent earnings in Germany and to provide a cross-country comparison of Germany, Denmark, and the US. The main findings are as follows: the importance of family and community background in...

This paper uses a large survey (SOEP) to update and deepen our knowledge about the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. It documents that immigrant workers initially earn on average 20 percent less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for...

We study the returns to apprenticeship and vocational training for three early labor market outcomes all measured at age 25 for East and West German youths: non-employment (i.e., unemployment or out of the labor force), permanent fulltime employment, and wages. We find strong positive effects of...

This paper uses information on the legal status upon arrival to study long-term labor market effects, whereas selection and potential outmigration are taken into account by a large set of methods. I find that immigrants arrived with a job commitment in Germany achieve a long-term income...

Long considered the classic coordinated market economy featuring employment security and relatively little employment precarity, the German labor market has undergone profound changes in recent decades. We assess the evidence for a rise in precarious employment in Germany from 1984 to 2013....

This article critically examines the theoretical arguments that underlie the literature linking personality traits to economic outcomes and provides empirical evidence indicating that labour market outcomes influence personality outcomes. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we...

Educational attainment, length of stay, differences in national background and language skills play an acknowledged important role for the integration of immigrants. But integration is also a social process, which suggests that psychological factors are relevant. This paper explores whether and...