This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary...

We evaluate the effects of a reduction in sick pay from 100 to 80% of the wage. Unlike previous literature, apart from absence from work, we also consider effects on doctor/hospital visits and subjective health indicators. We also add to the literature by estimating both switch-on and switch-off...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of reference-dependent effects of unemployment on mental well-being. We show that the negative effect of unemployment on mental well-being depends on expectations about the future employment status. Several contributions to the literature have shown that...

Using both household and linked employer-employee data for Germany, we assess the effects of non-union representation in the form of works councils on (1) individual sickness absence rates and (2) a subjective measure of personnel problems due to sickness absence as perceived by a firm's...

We study the impact of the Fukushima disaster on people's mental well·being in another industrialized country, more than 5000 miles distant. The meltdown significantlyincreased environmental concerns by 20% among the German population. Subsequent drastic policy action permanently shut down the...

Indirect psychological effects induced by crime are likely to contribute significantly to the total costs of crime beyond the financial costs of direct victimization. Using detailed crime statistics for the whole of Germany and linking them to individual-level mental health information from the...

In 1996, statutory sick pay was reduced for private sector workers in Germany. Using the empirical observation that trade union members are dismissed less often than non-members, we construct a model to predict how absence behaviour will respond to the sick pay reform. We show that union members...

Using SOEP panel data and difference-in-differences methods, this study is the first to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of four different health care cost containment measures within an integrated framework. The four measures investigated were introduced in Germany in 1997 to reduce moral...

This paper exploits rich SOEP microdata to analyze state-level variation in health care utilization in Germany. Unlike most studies in the field of the Small Area Variation (SAV) literature,our approach allows us to net out a large array of individual-level and state-level factors that may...

This paper estimates the effect of informal care provision on female caregiver's health. We use data from the German Socio-economic Panel and assess effects up to seven years after care provision. A simulation-based sensitivity analysis scrutinizes the sensitivity of the results with respect to...