Western labor markets face major challenges caused by demographic changes. They increasingly experience a shortage of skilled workers and face the problem of an increasing disparity between a reduced group of active workers contributing to the pension scheme and a rising share of an older...

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. The study is based on a large representative German dataset, which includes IQ test scores and measures of personality (locus of control,...

We study the effect of the introduction of the German statutory minimum wage law in 2015 on teenagers' educational expectations. We focus on low-skilled students, the group most likely to be affected by the minimum wage after entering the labor market. Theoretical predictions of the effect of...

This paper sheds light on the impact of the COVID-19 policy measures on a wide set of career expectations, occupational beliefs, and well-being of high-school students in their final grades. For this purpose, we use a unique panel data collection, which surveyed around 6,000 students in their...

Using German register data for the period between 1970 and 2010, this paper studies the labor market consequences of being born during the German food crisis after World War II. The paper finds that those born during the first half of 1946---about nine months after the period of most severe...

Personality traits and other non-cognitive skills have long been considered to be quite stable over adulthood. Economic studies on non-cognitive skills as determinants of educational and labor market outcomes therefore assumed their stability over time to rule out reverse causality. However,...