Unemployment continues to be one of the major challenges in industrialized societies. Aside from its economic dimensions and societal repercussions, questions concerning the individual experience of unemployment have recently attracted increasing attention. Although many studies have documented...

Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality,...

Since a court decided that bonuses paid to the former top management at Mannesmann AG were unjustifiable there has been widespread public discussion over fair pay in Germany. This has been against the background of big increases in the salaries paid to top executives at a time when the economy...

Inequality with respect to personal earned income has increased in recent years. This trend has gone hand in hand with changes in both the employment constellations of households and the labor market activity of individuals (e.g. through 'minijobs'). In particular, the years since 2000 have seen...

It is not possible to provide a scientific answer to questions regarding the 'fairness' of taxation. Nonetheless, empirical economics and social science research can still yield helpful information for legislators charged with deciding on the level and structure of the tax system. Such research...

In 2006 about 155 000 Germans left their country - more than ever before apart from the postwar wave of emigration in the 1950s. However, many recent German emigrants return to their home country. Although the question of why this rise has occurred is now arousing much attention from the general...

SOEP respondents have been asked about their participation in voluntary activities ever since the Survey started in 1984. Here we provide evidence about stability and change in levels of participation over the last twenty years. It is often suggested that an ageing society requires, or would...

At least half of all employees in Germany described their wages in all three survey years under consideration here - 2005, 2007, and 2009 - as just. Still, major changes occurred over this period in how people perceived their earnings. Data from the Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP) Study show that...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

Typically, laboratory experiments suffer from homogeneous subject pools and self-selection biases. The usefulness of survey data is limited by measurement error and by the questionability of their behavioral relevance. Here we present a method integrating interactive experiments and...