The present paper investigates the impact of international trade on individual labour market outcomes in the German service sector for the period 1995-2006. Combining micro-level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and industry-level trade data from input-output tables, we examine...

This paper studies the impact of international trade on individual labour market outcomes in the German manufacturing sector for the period 1995-2006. Combining micro-level data from the German Socioeconomic Panel and industry-level trade data from input-output tables, we examine the impacts on...

Based on the notion that entrepreneurship is a ‘local event,' the literature argues that self-employed workers and entrepreneurs are ‘rooted' in place. This paper tests the ‘residential rootedness'-hypothesis of self-employment by examining for Germany and the UK whether the self-employed...

In a simple 2-period model of relative income under uncertainty, higher comparison income for the younger cohort can signal higher or lower expected lifetime relative income, and hence either increase or decrease well-being. With data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British...

Using a unique dataset for Germany that links individual longitudinal data from the SOEP to regional data from the federal employment agency and data of real estate prices, we evaluate the impact of neighborhood unemployment on individual employment prospects. The panel setup and richness of the...

This paper examines the existence of a habituation effect to unemployment: Do the unemployed suffer less from job loss if unemployment is more widespread, if their own unemployment lasts longer and if unemployment is a recurrent experience? The underlying idea is that unemployment hysteresis may...

Previous research into the correlates and determinants of non-response in longitudinal surveys has focused exclusively on why it is that respondents at one survey wave choose not to participate at future waves. This is very understandable if non-response is always an absorbing state, but in many...

Chances are high that partners in dual-earner couples do not receive equal occupational returns from long-distance moves, because job opportunities are distributed heterogeneously in space. Which partners are more likely to receive relatively higher returns after moves? Recent research shows the...

We show that personality traits mediate the effect of income on Life Satisfaction. The effect is strong in the case of Neuroticism, which measures the sensitivity to threat and punishment, in both the British Household Panel Survey and the German Socioeconomic Panel. Neuroticism increases the...

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...