Economic theory suggests both positive and negative relationships between intra-firm wage inequality and productivity. This paper contributes to the growing empirical literature on this subject. We combine German employer-employee-data for the years 1995-2005 with inequality measures using the...

This paper considers the (short run) employment and wage effects of the 2004 EUenlargement on firms located close to Germany's Eastern border. We use a 50% sample of Germans plants and apply difference-in-differences-estimators combined with a matching approach. We evaluate changes in total...

This paper considers the impact of adverse health shocks that hit an individual's partner on subjective well-being. Using data on couples from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2006, I compare the losses in well-being caused by own and spousal disability using...

This paper considers labor market adjustments following a large import shock in the German clothing industry caused by the phasing out of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement. Using the German shoe industry as a control group and administrative data, we study adjustments on the individual and firm level...

Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for 2006, I test recent theoretical predictions on social comparisons influencing individual Body Mass Index (BMI). I find that in particular the average BMI of individuals in the same county-age-gender-cell as the respective...

I exploit exogenous changes in school year length in Germany in 1966 and 1967 to study the causal effect of education on health. Controlling for cohort, school track and Federal states fixed effects, which fully control for the assignment into treatment, reveals no differences in body weight,...