Population forecasts are crucial for many social, political and economic decisions. Official population projections rely in general on deterministic models which use different scenarios for future vital rates to indicate uncertainty. However, this technique shows substantial weak points such as...

Good forecasts for future fertility developments are of high importance in political planning, especially regarding measures in social insurance. Fertility is the main driver of demographic change, since small fertility rates lead to a shrinking population and together with decreasing mortality...

The future development of population size and structure is of importance since planning in many areas of politics and business is conducted based on expectations about the future makeup of the population. Countries with both decreasing mortality and low fertility rates, which is the case for...

This contribution proposes a simulation approach for the indirect estimation of age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) and the total fertility rate (TFR) for Germany via time series modeling of the principal components of the ASFRs. The model accounts for cross-correlation and autocorrelation...

Population forecasts are crucial for many social, political and economic decisions. Official population projections rely in general on deterministic models which use different scenarios for future vital rates to indicate uncertainty. However, this technique shows substantial weak points such as...

We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty...

We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty...

I investigate the contribution of pharmaceutical innovation to recent longevity growth in Germany and France. First, I examine the effect of the vintage of prescription drugs (and other variables) on the life expectancy and age-adjusted mortality rates of residents of Germany, using...

Due to the lack of Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) at regional level, regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures have been traditionally adjusted using national PPPs. The simplifying assumption that all regions of a country have the same cost of living, and implicitly that there are no...