Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we provide a comprehensive investigation of the relationship between workplace co-determination in the form of works councils and income satisfaction. Controlling for a wide range of individual, job-related, and firm-level characteristics in OLS...

The elasticity of taxable income (ETI) parameter is a key quantity in empirical analysis of tax policy and labor supply. We examine when a commonly applied class of ETI estimands can be used to learn about individuals' ETI parameters and their (un)compensated elasticities of labor supply. We...

I document a sudden, sharp and historically unprecedented decline in self-reported happiness in the US population. It occurred during 2020, the year of the Covid pandemic, and mainly persists through 2024. This happiness crash spread across nearly all typical demographics and geographies. The...

We estimate the effect of receiving a higher grade on an academic high school exit exam on labor-market outcomes in adulthood. Identification is based on comparing students on different sides of grade cutoffs. Using nationwide Finnish register data, we find that better grades lead to higher...

We examine how functional-form assumptions affect conclusions about the existence of satiation in the relationship between income and emotional well-being. Previous studies have estimated a piecewise log-linear model with one structural break in both intercept and slope, which may lead to...

The tax and transfer system partially insures households against individual income risk. We build a framework to assess the size and (welfare) value of this partial insurance, which is based on exploiting distributional differences between household gross income and disposable income. Our...

This paper investigates poverty dynamics in Brazil, highlighting how the frequency and patterns of movements into and out of poverty shape our understanding of stratification, social mobility, and the design of public policies. Using PNADC microdata from 2015 to 2020, we develop and implement an...

We study how public disclosure of politicians' outside income affects their behavior. We exploit a disclosure reform targeting German federal MPs and tax-return data in a differencein-differences setup using unaffected state MPs as controls. MPs increase their outside income by 24%, driven by...

First-class universities play an extremely important role in cultivating high-quality talents and technological innovation, serving as a significant indicator of a country's level of higher education development, developmental strength, and potential. However, there is little literature studying...

We use variation in marginal tax rates and in tax bracket thresholds at which they apply in order to identify the substitution and income effects of tax reforms. We use a triple-difference estimator that exploits variation from subnational tax reforms, for which behavioral responses to taxes are...

How do students’ earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data from a German university to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and...

This study employs 2011 Census data linked to population-based administrative datasets to explore disparities in educational attainment and earnings trajectories among Australian-born children of diverse parental migration backgrounds from mid-adolescence to early adulthood. Non-English Speaking...

This study investigates the impact of child-related absence from work on the income of working mothers and fathers, addressing a significant research gap in sociology and labour economics. While previous research has established that gender and parenthood significantly influence income levels,...

We study how population variation in testosterone levels impacts male labour market earnings using data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study between 2011 and 2013. We exploit genetic variation between individuals as instrumental variables following a Mendelian Randomization approach to...

We first review research about income and earnings volatility and second provide new UK evidence about the latter using high quality administrative record data. The USA stands out as a high volatility country relative to the UK and other high-income countries, but volatility levels have remained...

Die Studie untersucht den Beitrag der unterschiedlichen Einkommensarten, insbesondere der Einkommen aus unselbständiger Beschäftigung zur Finanzierung der öffentlichen Haushalte im Jahr 2019. Neben dem typischerweise dargestellten Aufkommen aus direkten Abgaben (Sozialbeiträge und...

How do students' earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data from a German university to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and...

Since 1972, the General Social Survey has periodically asked whether people are happy with Yes, Maybe or No type answers. Here I use a net "happiness" measure, which is percentage Yes less percentage No with Maybe treated as zero. Average happiness is around +20 on this scale for all respondents...

Public disclosure laws on politicians' outside income aim to enhance electoral accountability, but their effects remain unclear and may backfire. Using a German disclosure reform, administrative tax data, and a difference-in-difference design, we show that MPs increased their outside income...

Using a shift-share instrument, I study inflows of foreign-background immigrants to Finland and estimate how immigration affects natives' earnings at various points of the income distribution. My point estimates for the earnings effects of immigration are negative and statistically significant...

In genetics, heterosis describes how crossbreeding produces offspring with greater fitness than their parents. We propose a socioeconomic heterosis hypothesis: does genetic diversity at the individual level benefit economic success? Using UK Biobank data (N=488,152), we find that people with...

Using rich administrative data from 2005 to 2021 for Belgium, this paper analyses how earnings dynamics differ across socio-demographic groups, focusing on gender and education. We find that while permanent earnings inequality remains the dominant source of overall earnings inequality in...

We add to the debate about whether models of earnings dynamics should allow for unobservable heterogeneity in expected earnings growth rates by examining implications for a statistic originally proposed to estimate the variance of persistent earnings shocks. While that statistic is unbiased...

Traditional applied general-equilibrium (AGE) models have always faced trade-offs between analytical and computational tractability and counter-empirical restrictions. One is the assumption of homothetic preferences implying unitary income elasticities of demand, significantly inconsistent with...