This paper explores whether more generous social spending polices in fact lead to less income inequality, or if redistributive outcomes are offset by behavioral disincentive effects. To account for the inherent endogeneity of social policies with regard to inequality levels, I apply the System...

This paper explores whether more generous social spending polices in fact lead to less income inequality, or if redistributive outcomes are offset by behavioral disincentive effects. To account for the inherent endogeneity of social policies with regard to inequality levels, I apply the System...

We examine how parental health shocks affect children's non-cognitive skills. Based on a German mother-and-child data base, we draw on significant changes in self-reported parental health as an exogenous source of health variation to identify effects on outcomes for children at ages of three and...

This paper investigates two mechanisms through which education may affect cognitive skills in adolescence: the role of instructional quantity and the timing ofinstruction with respect to age. To identify causal effects, I exploit a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a...

This paper theoretically and empirically examines the impact of self-managed working time (SMWT) on employee effort. As a means of increased worker autonomy, SMWT can theoretically increase effort via intrinsic motivation and reciprocal behaviour, but can lead to a decrease of effort due to a...

In Germany, overtime work is a well-established instrument for varying working hours of employees and is of great importance for establishments as a measure of internal flexibility. However, not all employees are affected to the same degree by a variation of the work effort through overtime...

We document the educational integration of immigrant children with a focus on the link between family size and educational decisions and distinguishing particularly between first- and second-generation immigrants and between source country groups. First, for immigrant adolescents, we show...

This paper investigates whether individual control-perception affects the probability of becoming poor, and vice versa, whether poverty experiences can be detrimental to these traits later on. The former relation is intuitive as control related traits underly many idiosyncratic determinants of...

Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that paternal unemployment has a surprisingly positive causal effect on the "Big 5" personality traits of children aged 17 to 25. In particular, our results from longitudinal value-added models for personality suggest...

Based on nationally representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) we analyze the intergenerational transmission of economic and social (dis-)advantages in Germany, the United States and...