We quantify the importance of precautionary labor supply using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for 2001-2012. We estimate dynamic labor supply equations augmented with a measure of wage risk. Our results show that married men choose about 2.5% of their hours of work or one week...

This paper analyses the role of job changes in overcoming work hour constraints and the work hour mismatches resulting from these constraints (i.e., differences between actual and desired work hours). Building on previous findings that job change increases the flexibility of actual work hours,...

This paper examines the added worker effect (AWE), which refers to the increase of labor supply of individuals in response to a sudden financial shock in family income, that is, unemployment of their partner. While previous empirical studies focus on married women's response to those shocks, I...

Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to hamper employment. This paper investigates the importance of incentives inherent in the tax-benefit system for the individual decision to take up work. Using German microdata over the period 1993 -...

Arbeitszeitwünsche von Beschäftigten rücken in der jüngsten Vergangenheit stärker in den Fokus der öffentlichen und wissenschaftlichen Debatte. Dabei kommen repräsentative Studien für Deutschland hinsichtlich der Frage von Über- und Unterbeschäftigung zu sehr unterschiedlichen bis...

We use the German Socio-Economic Panel to show that introducing a high-impact statutory minimum wage causes an increase in reservation wages of approximately 4 percent at the low end of the distribution. The shifts in reservation wages and observed wages due to the minimum wage reform are...

This study investigates the employment and childcare use behaviour of migrant and non-migrant mothers in Germany. We use the waves 2007-2015 of the German Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP), including the migrant samples M1 and M2, to identify significant associations between migration background...

The debate on the effects of child care policies on household and individual behavior is substantial but lacks a discussion of the unintended consequences of rising wages in the child care work sector. To address this gap in the debate, the relation between rising pay and formal child care...

This paper sets out to provide an understanding of how individuals form their preferences over the extent of their paid work involvement - their working time preferences - in different work environments and societal contexts. The main objective of the empirical analysis is to investigate how...

Existing research has found little to no evidence for an added worker effect. However, studies to date have only analysed individuals' actual labor supply responses to their partners' job loss, neglecting to consider a potential mismatch between desired and actual labor supply adjustments. Using...