This paper documents and analyzes changes in relative wages of older East Germans after unification. In 1990, employees above 45 started out with very low wages relative to younger East Germans or West Germans in the same cohort. Results suggest that older employees lost up to 30 percent of...

Germany has a two-tier system of statutory and primary private health insurance. Both insurance types provide fee-for-service insurance, but chargeable fees for identical services are more than twice as large for privately insured as for statutorily insured patients. Using German SOEP 2002 data,...

This paper compares current and one-year retrospective data on unemployment in the German SOEP. Thirteen percent of all unemployment spells remain unreported one year later, and another 7 percent are misreported. Individuals with weak labour force attachment, e.g., women with children or...

This paper presents an attempt to calculate the non-financial costs of tobacco addiction. Using data on individual well-being and smoking behaviour, it is shown that tobacco addicts are on average less happy than non-addicts even if the potential endogeneity of smoking is controlled for. This...