Deploying data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) we analyze the variability of individual earnings and equivalent household income. Permanent and transitory variances of male income over the period 1984-2008 are estimated for Old German Laender in order to determine their importance to...

Deploying data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) we analyze the variability of individual earnings and equivalent household income. Permanent and transitory variances of male income over the period 1984-2008 are estimated for Old German Laender in order to determine their importance to...

This paper investigates justice perceptions of employees towards their own earnings. Earnings are decomposed into three components: (1) In returns based on human capital endowments, (2) in returns based on individual residual differences and (3) in returns based on differences between...

This paper examines to what extent non-random sorting of spouses affects earnings inequality while explicitly disentangling effects from increasing assortativeness in couple formation from changing patterns of couples' labor supply behavior. Using German micro data, earnings distributions of...

This paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross-sectional earnings inequality in Germany over the past three decades, while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices. Using rich micro data, the observed distribution of couples' earnings is compared to a counterfactual...

Existing literature on inequality of opportunity (IOp) has failed to address the question as to how the circumstances and choices of spouses in a couple should be treated. By omitting information relevant to the spouse in IOp estimations, the implicit assumption was full responsibility for the...

The case of German reunification has been subject to extensive research on earnings inequality and labor market integration. however, little is known about the development of equality of opportunity (EOp) in East and West Germany after 1990.Using German micro data, we empirically analyze how...

It is well known that the self-employed are over-represented at the bottom as well as the top of the income distribution. This paper shifts the focus from the income situation of the self-employed to the distributive effects of a change in self-employment rates. With representative German data...

Several studies have shown that income inequality has risen in Germany until 2005. Less focus was put on the rise of earnings inequality which continued to rise until 2010. We distinguish different groups in the labour market with respect to working-time, gender and region by exploiting data...

We examine the distributional effect of Germany's trade integration with China and Eastern Europe and show that there are considerable differences between the household level and the individual level impact. The trade shock increased inequality of individual earnings. At the household level,...