This paper explores the causal influence of media content on voting behavior. We exploit a natural experiment involving access to West German TV within the German Democratic Republic. Focusing on federal and state election outcomes in the post-reunification decade (i.e., a time at which TV...

We exploit Germany’s reunification to identify how school-age education affects entrepreneurial intentions. We look at university students in reunified Germany who were born before the Iron Curtain fell. During school age, all students in the West German control group received formal and...

We exploit Germany's reunification to identify how school-age education affects entrepreneurial intentions. We look at university students in reunified Germany who were born before the Iron Curtain fell. During school age, all students in the West German control group received formal and...

This is the first paper that studies the effects of including non-monetary income from housing (imputed rent) in the measure of income on intergenerational income mobility. Using national panel data sets for Australia, the United States and Germany, it is shown that only Australian society...

The noncognitive skill of conscientiousness has been linked to favorable labor market and health outcomes. But how is conscientiousness affected by events that happen in childhood? We investigate the effects of negative parental selection and economic and social upheaval on conscientiousness in...

This paper presents an exemplary case of social capital destruction through state action. We investigate the patterns of economic backwardness in East Germany and put forward a formal model and empirical evidence in favor of an intuitive yet novel conjecture: the differences in the scale and...

On the basis of an exhaustive assessment of the Social Inequality III dataset provided by the International Social Survey programme, this study aims to find a response to the following questions: 1) did the inclusion of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) into the Federal Republic of Germany...

There is a successful and growing number of studies published in top-economics journals that exploit the division and re-unification of Germany as a natural experiment for analysing the effects of political regimes on economic behaviour. One strand of the literature shows that socialism shaped...

Can television have a mitigating effect on xenophobia? To examine this question, we exploit the fact that individuals in some areas of East Germany - due to their geographic location - could not receive West German television until 1989. We conjecture that individuals who received West German...

This paper explores the causal influence of media content on voting behavior. We exploit a natural experiment involving access to West German TV within the German Democratic Republic. Focusing on federal and state election outcomes in the post-reunification decade (i.e., a time at which TV...