This study expands the literature on the determinants of educational attainment by analyzing the effects of birth order in Germany. These effects are typically attributed to sibling rivalry for parental resources. Using data from the German Life History Study on birth cohorts 1945-1978, we find...

What is the role of politics in shaping attitudes about appropriate roles for women in the family and the compatibility of work and motherhood? In this paper we argue that the German separation and later reunification produced a natural experiment to address this question. During the divided...

The aim of the paper is to analyse differences in the labour force participation (LFP) between East and West German women. Using microcensus data in a binary choice model, we distinguish three main explanations for these differences: the skill composition, the regional labour market and...

We investigate to what extent convergence in production levels per worker has been achieved in Germany since unification. To this end, we model the distribution of GDP per employee across German districts using two-component normal mixtures. While in the first year after unification, the two...