More than 25 years after German reunification, key economic indicators for households living in eastern German regions are still below the western German levels. This particularly holds for private net wealth, which reaches only about 40% of the western German level. However, a more granular...

In longitudinal studies, analysis can be based on any one of a large number of wavecombinations. However, only one set of non-response weights (often based on respondents from all waves up to the latest) is typically offered on public use data files. We refer to this as a single weighting...

We show that the OLS and fixed‐effects (FE) estimators of the popular difference-in-differences model may deviate when there is time varying panel non-response. If such non-response does not affect the common-trend assumption, then OLS and FE are consistent, but OLS is more precise. However,...

I derive the exact small sample properties of the instrumental variables estimator using a trigonometric approach. The distribution for the estimation error is decomposed into a product of three components - each with an intuitive interpretation. This approach helps the discussion on what...