A productive workforce is a key objective of public economic policy. Recent empirical work suggests that increasing individual participation in sports and exercise can be a major force for achieving this goal. The productivity gains and related increase in earnings come on top of the already...

Between 1991 and 1997 West Germany spent on average about 3.6 bn Euro per year on public sector sponsored training programmes for the unemployed. We base our empirical analysis on a new administrative data base that plausibly allows for selectivity correction by microeconometric matching...

This paper addresses three major aspects of firms' process innovative activity: forward- looking behaviour, uncertainty w.r.t. returns of R&D investments, and oligopolistic competition on the product market. Assuming that R&D expenditures are cost-reducing investments, we derive an Euler...

This paper investigates the link between variation in the supply of workers who participate in spe­cific types of active labour market policies (ALMPs) and firm performance using a new exception­ally informative German employer-employee data base. For identification we ex­ploit that German...

We evaluate a wage subsidy program that is targeted at long-term unemployed workers in Germany. We use an alternative identification procedure compared to empirical studies con­ducted so far. Exploiting the particular program regulations and large administrative data we estimate the impact of...

In this paper, we assess the impact of firms introducing part-time work schemes for gradual labour market exit of elderly workers on their employees' labour market outcomes. The analysis is based on unique linked employer-employee data that combine high-quality survey and administrative data....

This paper investigates the link between variation in the supply of workers who participate in specific types of active labour market policies (ALMPs) and firm performance using a new exceptionally informative German employer-employee data base. For identification we exploit that German local...

Throughout adulthood and old age, levels of well-being appear to remain relatively stable. However, evidence is emerging that late in life well-being declines considerably. Using long-term longitudinal data of deceased participants in national samples from Germany, the UK, and the US, we examine...

This study examines the phenomenon of nonresponse in the first wave of a refresher sample (subsample H) of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Our first step is to link additional (commercial) microgeographic data on the immediate neighborhoods of the households visited by...