In the 2008 Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) Pretest, the factorial survey method was tested for the first time for use in the SOEP longitudinal study. In this paper, we describe the construction and application of the vignette module, which has its origins in the field of justice research and...

In the 2008 Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) Pretest, the factorial survey method was tested for the first time for use in the SOEP longitudinal study. In this paper, we describe the construction and application of the vignette module, which has its origins in the field of justice research and...

This paper describes the implementation of a factorial survey within the SOEP-Pretest of 2008 and investigates (1) respondents' comments about the vignettes, (2) interviewers' assessments of respondents comprehension and willingness to answer, and (3) response behavior regarding response time,...

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 establishes that individuals with an internal locus of control, i.e., who believe that reinforcement in life comes from their own actions instead of being determined by luck or destiny, earn higher wages. However, this positive effect only translates into labor income via the channel...

This paper studies the effect of parenthood timing on future wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we employ an instrumental variable approach to identify the causal effect of delaying parenthood on wages of mothers and fathers. Consistent with previous studies, we...

In countries with strong employment protection laws it is often considered to be unwise to hire a woman in childbearing age because she might get pregnant. However, such labour demand effects of job protection measures related to maternity leave are often rather anecdotal. To provide analytical...

The positive association between moderate alcohol consumption and wages is well documented in the economic literature. Positive health effects as well as networking mechanisms serve as explanations for the alcohol-income puzzle. Using individual-based microdata from the GSOEP for 2006, we...

Empirical research has unambiguously shown that married men receive higher wages than unmarried, whereas a wage premium for cohabiters is not as evident yet. Our paper exploits the observed difference between the marital and the cohabiting wage premium in Germany and thus provides new insights...

We present a semiparametric method to estimate group-level dispersion, which is particularly effective in the presence of censored data. We apply this procedure to obtain measures of occupation-specific wage dispersion using top-coded administrative wage data from the German IAB Employment...