We first confirm previous results with the German Socio-Economic Panel by Layard et al. (2010), and obtain strong negative effects of comparison income. However, when we split the sample by age, we find quite different results for reference income. The effects on life-satisfaction are positive...

Using several microeconomic data sets from the United States and the Netherlands, and the examples of height and beauty, this study examines whether: 1) Absolute or relative differences in a characteristic are what affect labor-market and other outcomes; and 2) The effects of a characteristic...

This paper challenges the common assumption made by economists to date that income comparisons are similarly important in different segments of the subjective well-being (SWB) distribution. The results, based on the 2000-2007 waves of the German SOEP and on a Generalized Ordered Probit for panel...

We use a simple regression-based approach to measure the relationship between employment growth, hirings and separations in a large panel of German establishments over the period 1993-2009. Although the average level of hiring and separation is much lower in Germany than in the US, as expected,...

The compensation of executive board members in Germany has become a highly controversial topic since Vodafone's hostile takeover of Mannesmann in 2000 and it is again in the spotlight since the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2009. Based on unique panel data evidence of the 500 largest firms...

This paper documents the relationship between foreign ownership and firm survival for enterprises in Germany using unique tailor-made new representative data that merge information from surveys performed by the Statistical Offices, from administrative data collected by the Tax Authorities and...

Exploiting a unique dataset including cross-country comparable hiring and separation rates by type of transition for 24 OECD countries, 23 business-sector industries and 13 years, we study the effect of dismissal regulations on different types of gross worker flows, defined as one-year...