The gender wage gap is a persistent labor market phenomenon. Most research focuses on the determinants of these wage differences. We contribute to this literature by exploring a different research question: if wages of women are systematically lower than male wages, what are the distributional...

We analyze the transmission of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 to 415 country-industry equity portfolios. We use a factor model to predict crisis returns, defining unexplained increases in factor loadings and residual correlations as indicative of contagion. While we find evidence of...

This paper outlines the importance of labor mobility for the improvement in allocating and distributing economic resources. We are faced with an increasing lack of skilled workers and a growing tendency of unemployment amongst the low-skilled. A central political objective for the future will...

We study the determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads across 10 EMU countries between Q1/1999 and Q1/2010. We apply a semiparametric time-varying coefficient model to identify, to what extent an observed change in the yield spread is due to a shift in macroeconomic fundamentals or due to...

Financial support for families with children implies inherent trade-offs some of which are less obvious than others. In the end these trade-offs determine the effectiveness of policy with respect to the material situation of families and employment of their parents. We analyse several kinds of...

We conduct detailed analysis of the Polish Household Budget Survey data for the years 2006-2011 with the focus on its representativeness from the point of view of microsimulation analysis. We find important discrepancies between the data weighted with baseline grossing-up weights and official...

This paper empirically analyzes the causal relationship between migration and human trafficking inflows into Germany during the period between 2001 and 2010. My results suggest that migrant networks, measured by migrant stocks from a specific source country, increase the illicit, exploitative...

Microsimulation methods and models of labor market decisions have attracted a lot of attention as an approach to the assessment of consequences of family related policies in the area of labor market and fertility. We set these models in the context of relevant demographic theories and present...

We investigate the likely sources of exchange rate dynamics in selected CIS countries (Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova) over the past decade (1999-2008). The analysis is based on country VAR models augmented by a regional common factor structure (FAVAR model)....

This paper extends previous research about the determinants of reservation wages by analysing the effect of progressive income taxation on the ratio between reservation and net market wages. Based on micro data for Germany (SOEP) we show that joint income taxation in Germany which discriminates...