In several countries social assistance dependence has been increasing since the 1980s. After surveying the theoretical and empirical take-up literature, this study presents estimates of recent rates of non take-up of social assistance benefits. Once methodological shortcomings of prior...

This study uses recent data taken from the German Socioeconomic Panel (2002-2006) to evaluate the extent of and heterogeneity in returns to tenure for men in East and West Germany, employed in both the private and the public sector. We find significantly different wage patterns in East- and West...

We extend the literature on transition economies' wage structures by investigating the returns to tenure and experience. This study applies recent panel data and estimation approaches that control for hitherto neglected biases. We compare the life cycle structure of East and West German wages...

This article studies the long run patterns and explanations of wage mobility as a characteristic of regional labor markets. Using German administrative data we describe wage mobility since 1975 in West and since 1992 in East Germany. Wage mobility declined substantially in East Germany in the...

This paper summarizes the findings of studies which investigate the determinants of wages in Germany, using data of the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP). The empirical analyses apply least squares estimates as well as the estimators developed by Altonji and Shakotko (1987) and Topel (1991)....

We investigate the responsiveness of individual retirement decisions to changes in financial incentives. The causal effect is identified based on the natural experiment generated by an institutional reform. The results of a binary retirement model are robust to alternative model specifications,...

This study applies rich data from the 2000 Swiss census to investigate the patterns of intergenerational education transmission for natives and second generation immigrants. The level of secondary schooling attained by youth aged 17 is related to their parents' educational outcomes using data on...

This paper analyses annual, age-specific retirement rates in Germany between 1971 and 1991. The time-series data show significant changes in overall and age-specific retirement behavior over the 21 year period. The literature provides two alternative explanations for the observed developments:...

This paper uses panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to analyze welfare entry and exit among natives and immigrants after a substantial reform of the welfare system (``Hartz reform''). Using results from dynamic multinomial logit models, we calculate transition matrices between...

We study state dependence in welfare receipt and investigate whether welfare transitions changed after a welfare reform. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we apply dynamic multinomial logit estimators and find that state dependence in welfare receipt is not a central feature of...