Using SOEP data (1984-2006) we analyze the role of parental background for transitions to tertiary education in Germany and answer three questions: (a) does the relevance of parental background shift from short-term (contemporary income) to long factors (ability, parental education) at higher...

We use reforms in the Swiss public retirement system to identify the responsiveness of retirement timing to financial incentives. A permanent reduction of retirement benefits by 3.4 percent induces more than 70 percent of females to postpone their retirement. The responsiveness of male workers,...

Das Projekt erarbeitete eine Bestandsaufnahme und kritische Diskussion gängiger Bildungsindikatoren im internationalen Vergleich aus interdisziplinärer und bildungsökonomischer Sicht. Im Fokus standen OECD-Indikatoren zu Bildungsabschlüssen, zu Schüler- und Erwachsenenkompetenzen (PISA,...

We study state dependence in the German welfare system and compare transition patterns before and after recent reforms of the welfare system (Hartz Reforms). Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we apply dynamic multinomial logit estimators and find that welfare transitions have...

We study the development of teenage fertility in East and West Germany using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and from the German Mikrozensus. Following the international literature we derive hypotheses on the patterns of teenage fertility and test whether they are relevant in the...

Summary The theory of fiscal federalism argues that local governments should only tax mobile tax bases for the purpose of charging user taxes which correct for congestion effects. Empirically, we observe that local governments do levy taxes on mobile bases. In Germany, this is the local business...

We investigate the causal effect of youths' age at immigration on subsequent educational attainment in the destination country. To identify the causal effect we compare the educational attainment of siblings at age 21, exploiting the fact that they typically migrate at different ages within a...

The authors investigate the effect of managerial performance evaluation styles on employee work effort. Using panel data on 4,080 employees in a Swiss unit of an international company for the period 1999-2002, they test two hypotheses using paid and unpaid overtime work as effort indicators. The...

We study the development of teenage fertility in East and West Germany using data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) and from the German Mikrozensus. Following the international literature we derive hypotheses on the patterns of teenage fertility and test whether they are relevant in the...