This paper estimates the causal effect of an additional year of parents' schooling on theirchildren's education, exploiting compulsory schooling reforms that were implemented inall West German states between 1946 and 1969. Although previous research indicatesthat these reforms had no effects on...

We estimate the effect of age at preschool entrance on crucial noncognitive skills in theyear before school starts. Using an instrumental variable approach and exploiting cut-offdates for the time at preschool entrance we find that children entering preschool earlierin life have better...

In theoretical trade models with variable markups and collective wage bargaining, exportexposure may reduce the exporter wage premium. We test this prediction using linkedGerman employer-employee data from 1996 to 2007. To separate the rent-sharingmechanism from assortative matching, we exploit...

Economies of scale and scope are typically modelled and estimated using cost functions that are common to all firms in an industry irrespective of whether they specialize in a single output or produce multiple outputs. We suggest an alternative flexible technology model that does not make this...

Does higher income cause democracy? Accounting for the dynamic nature and highpersistence of income and democracy, we find a statistically significant positive relationbetween income and democracy for a postwar period sample of up to 150 countries. Ourresults are robust across different model...

We study the effect of preschool attendance on secondary school track choice in Germany which is a crucial outcome that largely predicts educational pathways of children. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, multivariate models show a significant positive association between years of...

We analyze the extent to which endogenous cultural amenities affect the spatial equilibriumshare of high-human-capital employees. To overcome endogeneity, we draw on a quasinaturalexperiment in German history and exploit the exogenous spatial distribution ofbaroque opera houses built as a part...

Many Kyoto countries fear a loss of competitiveness due to unilateral climate policyefforts; policymakers therefore call for carbon-related border tax adjustments. With thispaper we attempt to estimate the treatment effect of Kyoto commitment on bilateralexport flows using regression-adjusted...

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way workers and firms are matched on the job market. Compared to newspapers and other traditional employment resources, online job boards presumably lead to better matches by providing a wider choice of job advertisements and more sophisticated methods...

In this paper we analyze the impact of the expectations about future labor income on thesaving behavior of German households. We measure expectations on an individual basisinstead of generalized risk measures as it is common in existing studies. We use aunique panel data set on household...