We apply an innovative technique to allow for differential effects of physical appearance and self-confidence across the wage distribution, as traditional methods can confound opposing effects at either end of the wage distribution. Comparing the effects of beauty and confidence measures in two...

Using harmonized wealth data and a novel decomposition approach in this literature, we show that cohort effects exist in the income profiles of asset and debt portfolios for a sample of European countries, the U.S. and Canada. We find that the association between household wealth portfolios at...

Using harmonized wealth data and a novel decomposition approach, we show that cohort effects exist in the income profiles of asset and debt portfolios for a sample of European countries, the U.S. and Canada. We find that younger households' participation decisions in assets are more responsive...

This note uses a unique dataset for Germany which contains interviewer-rated physical appearance assessments of survey respondents both before and after the interview to address three questions. Firstly, after the first impression of an individual's physical appearance, what characteristics make...

We examine the gender wealth gap with a focus on pension wealth and statutory pension rights. By taking into account employment characteristics of women and men, we are able to identify the extent to which the redistributive effect of pension rights reduces the gender wealth gap. The data for...

We model the process of field specialization choice among beginning economists within a multivariate logit framework that accommodates single and dual primary field specializations and incorporates correlations among field specialization choices. Conditioning on personal, economic, and...

While most studies on wealth inequality focus on the inequality between households, this paper examines the distribution of wealth within couples. For this purpose, we make use of unique individual level micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). In married and cohabiting...

When comparing economic well-being using income or expenditures, an equivalence scale is often used to adjust for differences in characteristics that affect needs. For example, a family of two is assumed to need more income than a single person, but not twice as much due to the economies of...

We apply diversity indices, such as the Gini-Simpson index and entropy related indices, to the study of the distribution of individual asset holdings in the United States in 2007 and 2009. We examine the impact of the 2008 recession on asset diversity and the way individual socio-economic...

The objective of the study is to investigate the changing role of explanatory factors of wealth and the gender wealth gap in Germany over the period 2002-2012 using individual level microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel. The authors apply distributional decomposition methods and focus...