Does poor air quality affect decision-making? We study this question based on elections, in which millions of people decide on the same issue on the same day in different locations. We use county-level data from 64 federal and state elections in Germany over a nineteen-year period and exploit...

Die Einführung des gesetzlichen Mindestlohns in Deutschland im Jahr 2015 war im Vorfeld heftig umstritten. Die Diskussion entzündete sich vor allem an den erwarteten Beschäftigungsfolgen der Reform. Größere Beschäftigungsverluste sind allerdings fünf Jahre nach der Mindestlohnreform...

Schulen tragen nicht zu den im Moment steigenden Corona-Fallzahlen bei. Das Wiederöffnen der Schulen nach den deutschen Sommerferien trug vermutlich sogar dazu bei, dass die Inzidenzzahlen niedriger geblieben sind, als sie bei geschlossenen Schulen gewesen wären. Die obligatorischen...

This paper examines the effect of wealth on labour market behaviour. Providing convincing evidence on this relationship is challenging since wealth and labour supply may be endogenously determined. We overcome this by looking at wealth shocks in the form of inheritances, distinguishing between...

This paper examines the effect of the student sex ratio on marriage market outcomes of university graduates in Germany. Using Microcensus data combined with administrative information on the gender composition of students, I exploit substantial variation in gender imbalances by field of study...

In Germany, two observations can be tracked over the past 15 to 20 years: First, income inequality has constantly increased while, second, the average household size has been declining dramatically. The analysis of income distribution relies on equivalence-weighted incomes, which take into...

In Germany, two observations can be made over the past 20 years: First, income inequality has been constantly increasing while, second, the average household size has been declining dramatically. The analysis of income distribution relies on equivalence-weighted incomes which take into account...

Closely following recent innovations in the literature on the multidimensional measurement of poverty, this paper provides similar measures for the top of the distribution using a dual cutoff method to identify individuals, who can be considered as rich in a multidimensional setting. We use this...

Using a unique dataset of German members of parliament with information on total earnings including outside income, this paper analyzes the politicians' wage gap (PWG). After controlling for observable characteristics as well as accounting for selection into politics, we find a positive PWG...

This paper employs a multidimensional approach for the measurement of well-being at the top of the distribution using German SOEP micro data. Besides income as traditional indicator for material well-being, we include health as a proxy for nonmaterial quality of life as well as self-reported...