In this paper we study the determinants of international migration to Germany, 1967-2000. The empirical literature on macro-economic migration functions usually explains migration flows by a set of explanatory variables such as the income differential, employment rates, and migrations stocks as...

Since the inequality of earnings in East Germany has approached West German levels in the late 1990s, the standard Roy model predicts that a positive selection bias of East-West migrants should disappear. Using a switching regression model and data from the IABemployment sample, we find however...

An interaction in a fixed effects (FE) regression is usually specified by demeaning the product term. However, this strategy does not yield a genuine within estimator. Instead, an estimator is produced that reflects unit-level differences of interacted variables whose moderators vary within...

Respondent driven sampling (RDS) is a network sampling technique typically employed for hard-to-reach populations (e.g. drug users, men who have sex with men, people with HIV). Similar to snowball sampling, initial seed respondents recruit additional respondents from their network of friends....

The volume and commodity structure of EU trade with the transition countries in central and eastern Europe (CEECs) is estimated on the assumption that it will follow the pattern of trade among market economies. A gravity-type approach at the level of product groups is used, combining geography...

The paper explores theoretically and empirically why trade intermediaries (TIs) are frequently used as agents for exports to some countries but not to others. We adapt a standard intra-industry trade model with variable export costs (e.g. transport) and fixed export costs (e.g. market access) to...

Dieser Papier beschäftigt sich mit der Datenqualität von Körpergewichtsangaben in der Längsschnittstudie sozio-oekonomisches Panel (SOEP). Verschiedene Methodenstudien deuten darauf hin, dass Interviewer und die Interviewsituation einen Einfluss auf das Antwortverhalten der Befragten bei...

Drawing on data from the twenty year long German Socioeconomic Panel Study, we show that partisanship is bounded. Almost every West German, East German, and immigrant never supports one or both of the major parties and most people vary support for their party by claiming no partisan preference....

Although left-right items are a standard tool of public opinion research, there remains some difference of opinion on the optimal response format. Two disputes can be identified in the literature: (a) whether to provide respondents with a small or large number of answer categories and (b)...

Drawing on data from two multitrait multimethod experiments carried out in the context of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this paper identifies questionnaire designs that minimize measurement error in reports of subjective well-being. Among the survey instruments most often used to...