We use a large linked employer-employee data set to analyze the importance of relative wage positions in the context of individual quit decisions as an inverse measure of job satisfaction. Our main findings are: (1) Workers with higher relative wage positions within their firms are on average...

We use a long panel data set for four entry cohorts into an internal labor market to analyze the effect of age on the probability to participate in different training measures. We find that training participation probabilities are inverted u-shaped with age and that longer training measures are...

We evaluate the effects of employer-provided formal training on employee suggestions for productivity improvements and on promotions among male blue-collar workers. More than twenty years of personnel data of four entry cohorts in a German company allow us to address issues such as unobserved...

I use a question about works council relations from the 2006 wave of the IAB Establishment panel to analyze the heterogeneous effects of works councils on productivity, wages, and profits. The results indicate that the effects differ significantly between works council relationship types in a...

Survey data is used to estimate the impact of physical attractiveness rated by the interviewer as well as by the respondent on employment probability and labor income of men and women. In addition to mean linear and non-linear effects on earnings, simultaneous quantile regressions are applied to...

Religiosity influences economic behavior in various domains, but what determines religiosity? Using data from the representative Socio-Economic Panel Study for Germany (SOEP), this paper shows that religious activity increases after a family member's death. The life event's effect is larger...