Why are better educated and more risk-friendly persons more mobile across regions? To answer this question, we use micro data on internal migrants from the German Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP) 2000 - 2006 and merge this information with a unique proxy for region-pair-specific cultural distances...

We investigate whether time-persistent cultural borders impede economic exchange across regions of the same country. To measure cultural differences we evaluate, for the first time in economics, linguistic micro-data about phonological and grammatical features of German dialects. These data are...

Leere Haushaltskassen verleiten die politisch Verantwortlichen schnell dazu, am Kulturetat zu sparen. Das könnte sich als kontraproduktiv erweisen, denn kulturelle Angebote steigern das regionale Wirtschaftswachstum. Eine aktuelle Studie des ifo Instituts, die zusammen mit der Universität Jena...

We document the spatial diffusion of Friedrich Froebel's radical invention of kindergartens in 19th-century Germany. The first kindergarten was founded at Froebel's birthplace. Early spatial diffusion can be explained by cultural proximity, measured by historical dialect similarity, to Froebel's...

Friedrich Froebel, a German pedagogue, established the first kindergarten worldwide in Thuringia in 1839. We study the spatial dissemination of the kindergarten movement in Germany in the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Spatial dissemination can be explained by the cultural proximity,...

Ever since Sjaastad (1962), researchers have struggled to quantify the psychic cost of migration. We monetize psychic cost as the wage premium for moving to a culturally different location. We combine administrative social security panel data with a proxy for cultural difference based on unique...

Ever since Sjaastad (1962), researchers have struggled to quantify the psychic cost of migration. We monetize psychic cost as the wage premium for moving to a culturally different location. We combine administrative social security panel data with a proxy for cultural difference based on...

Why are better educated and more risk-friendly persons more mobile across regions? To answer this question, we use micro data on internal migrants from the German Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP) 2000 - 2006 and merge this information with a unique proxy for region-pair-specific cultural distances...