We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the self-employed, who...

We present first evidence how individual risk preferences shape entrepreneurial investment among the very wealthy using novel survey data from the top of the wealth distribution, which have been added to the 2019 German Socio-economic Panel Study. The data include private wealth balance sheets,...

We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the self-employed, who...

We decompose earnings risk into contributions from hours and wage shocks. To distinguish between hours shocks, modeled as innovations to the marginal disutility of work, and labor supply reactions to wage shocks we formulate a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply. For estimation we...

This study explores the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and workers' well-being and mental health using longitudinal survey data from Germany (2000-2020). We construct a measure of individual exposure to AI technology based on the occupation in which workers in our sample were...

While inequality of opportunity (IOp) in earnings is well studied, the literature on IOp in individual net wealth is scarce to non-existent. This is problematic because both theoretical and empirical evidence show that the position in the wealth and income distribution can significantly diverge....

We investigate gender differences in the time taken to accept empirical articles. On average, female-authored economics articles take notably longer to accept. Acceptance delay is nine weeks longer when solo-authored and five weeks longer for all female teams. This gender gap cannot be...

Previous estimates indicate that COVID-19 led to a large drop in the number of operating businesses operating early in the pandemic, but surprisingly little is known on whether these shutdowns turned into permanent closures and whether small businesses were disproportionately hit. This paper...

We investigate the effect of personal income tax (PIT) rates on the number of hours entrepreneurs work weekly. Using the rotating panel data from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey from 2003 to 2019, we estimate instrumental variable regressions in first...

The dynamics of startup activity are crucial for job creation, innovation, and a competitive economy. Does regional firm formation exhibit hysteresis, such that shocks, including those induced by temporary policy interventions, have permanent effects? Due to the pronounced heterogeneity among...