We analyze the causal effect of education on old-age cognitive abilities using German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) data and regional variation in mandatory years of schooling and the supply of schools. Our outcome variable is the score an individual reaches in an ultra-short intelligence test. We...

While there is a big literature on the benefits of pre-school education, only little is known why kindergarten attendance improves later-life outcomes. This is partly because most studies analyze the effect of complete 2 years pre-school programs. In order to shed light into the black box of...

We analyze the effect of education on wages using German Socio-Economic Panel data and regional variation in mandatory years of schooling and the supply of schools. This allows us to estimate more than one local average treatment effect and heterogeneous effects for different groups of...

ABSTRACT We used an administrative dataset covering approximately 90% of all Germans to investigate the determinants of regional differences in the utilisation of ambulatory services in the year 2008. There are great regional differences in Germany, in GP, specialist and psychotherapist...

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...

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...

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...

Since 2009, German nursing homes have been evaluated regularly with quality report cards published online. We argue that most of the information in the report cards does not reliably measure quality of care, but a subset of seven measures does. Using a sample of more than 3,000 nursing homes...

We analyse the impact of optional deductibles, private supplementary health insurance and income on the demand for health care utilization, measured as the number of physician visits with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). With a set of newly available variables for the years...

This study analyses the effect of a change in the remuneration system for physicians on the treatment lengths as measured by the number of doctor visits using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 1995–2002. Specifically, I analyse the introduction of a remuneration cap (so...