Population projections – especially those of the Federal Statistical Office in Germany – are often used for research questions that depend on the future size and structure of the population. Nevertheless, by using the population projections of the Federal Statistical Office the scope of...

We hypothesize that the timing of the fertility transition is an important determinant of comparative physiological development. In support, we provide a model of long-run growth, which elucidates the links between population size, average body size and income during development....

In this paper we provide semiparametric estimation strategies for a sample selection model with a binary dependent variable. To the best of our knowledge, this has not been done before. We propose a control function approach based on two di erent identifying assumptions. This gives rise to...

This paper investigates how post-school education decisions are affected by a one-year reduction of secondary school duration with an unchanged curriculum. Until recently, Germany had had a longstanding tradition of 13 years of schooling in preparation for university. During the last decade,...

In this paper, we revisit the Mulligan and Rubinstein (2008: Selection, investment and women's relative wages over time. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(3):1061-1110) analysis about the composition of the female workforce in the United States. Using a Heckman selection model, these...

Detecting the number of breaks in the mean can be challenging when it comes to the long memory framework. Tree-based procedures can be applied to time series when the location and number of mean shifts are unknown and estimate the breaks consistently though with possible overfitting. For pruning...

We examine whether the experience of shocks influences individual risk attitude. We measure risk attitude via a simple survey item, compiled among more than 4,000 households in Thailand and Vietnam. The experience of adverse shocks, which is typical for poor and vulnerable households, is related...

When based on perceived rather than o n objective income distributions, the Meltzer- Richards hypothesis and the POUM hypothesis work quite well empirically: there exists a positive link between perceived inequality or perceived upward mobility and the extent of redistribution in democratic...

This study investigates risk and time preferences of small-holder cattle farmers in West Africa. We apply a discounted utility model and jointly estimate a prospect theory-based utility function and a quasi-hyperbolic discounting function using a maximum likelihood method. Results show that West...

This research uses macro factors to explain four standard U.S. stock market risk premia, i.e. the market excess return (RM-RF), size (SMB), value (HML), and momentum (WML). We find in-sample predictive power of macro factors, in particular at a one-year horizon. Differentiating between bull and...