What is subjective well-being influenced by? Since the Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress by Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi a huge number of studies has raised this question - with partly different findings. In addition, international...

To study the development of wage inequality is important for the economic performance as well as for the development of employment. First, I estimate the remuneration to personal characteristics for Germans and immigrants across the wage distribution using quantile regression. My database is the...

What is subjective well-being influenced by? Since the Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress by Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi a huge number of studies has raised this question - with partly different findings. In addition, international...

To study the development of wage inequality is important for the economic performance as well as for the development of employment. First, I estimate the remuneration to personal characteristics for Germans and immigrants across the wage distribution using quantile regression. My database is the...

The gender pay gap (GPG) remains a persistent phenomenon in contemporary labor markets. Despite a vast body of research examining its causes, as of today, unequal labor market power resources between men and women have remained an underappreciated factor in the literature. Drawing on the...

In a simple conceptual framework, we organize a multitude of phenomena related to the (mis)prediction of utility. Consequences in terms of distorted choices and lower wellbeing emerge if people have to trade-off between alternatives that are characterized by attributes satisfying extrinsic...

Based on the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) and the German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP), we show that household consumption drops after a child moves out of a household, while at the same time, per capita consumption increases significantly. Parents approximately upgrade...

This paper presents detailed evidence about who compares to whom in terms of relative income. We rely on representative survey data on the importance of income comparisons vis-a-vis seven reference groups, allowing us to exploit within-subject heterogeneity. We explore the prevalence and...

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary...

In this paper we study the effect of television exposure on fertility. We exploit a natural experiment that took place in Germany after WWII. For topographical reasons, Western TV programs, which promoted one/no child families, could not be received in certain parts of East Germany. Using an IV...