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...

This paper studies self-control in a nationally representative sample. Using the well-established Tangney scale to measure trait self-control, we find that people’s age as well as the political and economic institutions they are exposed to have an economically meaningful impact on their level...

This paper studies self-control in a nationally representative sample. Using the well-established Tangney scale to measure trait self-control, we find that people’s age as well as the political and economic institutions they are exposed to have an economically meaningful impact on their level...

Using arguably exogenous variation in college expansions we estimate the effects of college education on female fertility. While college education reduces the probability of becoming a mother, college-educated mothers have more children than mothers without a college education. Lower...

RWI presents first evidence on why college educated women have less children than women who did not go to college. While tertiary education has a direct negative impact on women’s probability to become a mother, college educated mothers bear more children than noncollege educated mothers....

This paper studies self-control in a nationally representative sample. Using the wellestablished Tangney scale to measure trait self-control, we find that people's age as well as the political and economic institutions they are exposed to have an economically meaningful impact on their level of...

We study the impact of the business cycle on mental wellbeing by linking rich German survey data to over a decade of detailed gross domestic product information. Endogeneity concerns are tackled using a shift-share instrumental variables approach in which exposure to macroeconomic fluctuations...

In this paper, we identify female long-term wage returns to college education using the educational expansion between 1960-1990 in West Germany as exogenous variation for college enrollment. We estimate marginal treatment effects to learn about the underlying behavioral structure of women who...