Do trade unions benefit from economic crises by attracting new members among workers concerned about job security? To address this question, we provide a comprehensive empirical investigation based on panel data from Germany, where workers decide individually on their membership. We analyse...

This paper constitutes the first economic investigation into the potential detrimental role of smartphones in the workplace based on a field experiment. We exploit the conduct of a nationwide telephone survey, for which interviewers were recruited to work individually and in single offices for...

Causal evidence for the effect of team size on performance is lacking despite the high relevance of this question. From an economic perspective, one would expect performance incentives to decrease with increasing team size, but the psychological phenomenon of peer effects could mitigate the...

For representative German panel data, we document that voluntary job switching is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, though only for some time, whereas forced job changes do not affect life satisfaction clearly. Using plant closures as an exogenous trigger of switching to a new...

During the European sovereign debt crisis, most countries that ran into fiscal trouble had Catholic majorities, whereas countries with Protestant majorities were able to avoid fiscal problems. Survey data show that, within Germany, views on theeuro differ between Protestants and Non-Protestants,...

Economists often interpret absenteeism as an indicator of effort. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, this paper offers a comprehensive discussion of this view by analysing various forms of job mobility. The evidence reveals a significantly negative (positive) link...

For representative German panel data, we document that voluntary job switching is associated with higher levels of life satisfaction, though only for some time, whereas forced job changes do not affect life satisfaction clearly. Using plant closures as an exogenous trigger of switching to a new...

This empirical study investigates if people's concerns about the euro currency affect their life satisfaction. A minority of very concerned individuals appear to be unhappy, which cannot be explained by personality or other observable factors typically affecting well-being. As a novelty, this...