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Summary This paper investigates the gender wage gap among skilled German workers after the end of vocational training using data from social security records. Using information on worker and plant characteristics for the training plant, results from standard decomposition techniques show that up to 92% of an initial 14% earnings disadvantage for women in the first job can be attributed to differences in endowments. Of these, occupational segregation explains up to two thirds of the earnings gap, with plant characteristics accounting for about 25%.

This paper provides first evidence on the social returns to education from both firm-level and regional human capital. Using panel data from German social security, both at an individual and aggregated at the plant and regional level, I estimate earnings functions incorporating measures of regional and firm-level human capital while controlling for various types of unobserved heterogeneity, demand shocks, regional physical capital and other regional and firm-level confounders. The results suggest negligibly small external returns to the firm-level shares of high-skilled workers. On the regional level, the results show no support for external returns to education, except for skilled workers.

This paper provides first evidence on the anatomy of human capital externalities arising from both firm-level and regional human capital. Using panel data from German social security records, both at an individual and aggregated at the plant and regional level, I estimate earnings functions incorporating measures of regional and firm-level human capital while controlling for various types of unobserved heterogeneity. The results suggest that the firm-level share of high-skilled workers generates positive, although small social returns to education for low-skilled and skilled workers but not for the high-skilled. This finding is in line with learning based theories of human capital externalities. Some estimates also suggest negative social returns for the regional shares of low-skilled workers. No such effects are found for the firm-level shares of low-skilled workers and the regional shares of high-skilled workers.

This paper shows that differences in various non-cognitive traits, specifically the "big five", positive and negative reciprocity, locus of control and risk aversion, contribute to gender inequalities in wages and employment. Using the 2004 and 2005 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel, evidence from regression and decomposition techniques suggests that gender differences in psychological traits are more important for inequalities in wages than in employment. Differences in the "big five", in particular in agreeableness, conscientiousness and neurocitism matter for both wages and employment. For the latter, the results also show a large effect of differences in external locus of control.

This paper shows that differences in various non-cognitive traits, specifically the “big five”, positive and negative reciprocity, locus of control and risk aversion, contribute to gender inequalities in wages and employment. Using the 2004 and 2005 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel, evidence from regression and decomposition techniques suggests that gender differences in psychological traits are more important for inequalities in wages than in employment. Differences in the “big five”, in particular in agreeableness, conscientiousness and neurocitism matter for both wages and employment. For the latter, the results also show a large effect of differences in external locus of control.

This paper considers the impact of tobacco consumption on wages in the UK using data from fifteen waves of the British Household Panel Survey. Considering both overall smoker status as well as the number of cigarettes consumed, we provide estimates for the smoking wage penalty using standard regression methods, including panel estimators for fixed effects and panel instrumental variable estimators. Furthermore, we analyse the impact of stopping and starting to smoke relative to permanent smokers and non-smokers by Mahalanobis-matching. In the cross-section, we find a rather large wage penalty for smokers of about 4%. However, panel estimator and IV results show relatively few support for hypotheses linking the smoking wage penalty to either lower productivity of smokers, be it health related or not, or discrimination. Matching results suggest that starting or stopping to smoke does not affect later earnings relative to remaining either smoker or non-smoker.

This paper investigates whether high regional crime levels lead to a compensating wage differential paid by firms in the respective region. Using data from German social security records and official police statistics for 2003 to 2006, we consider both violent and non-violent crimes and use three-way error-components estimators to control for individual and regional heterogeneity. Our findings suggest a positive and rather large compensating differential for the risk of falling victim to a violent crime while no such effect exists for other criminal activities. However, our results also suggest that the wage effects for most individuals are rather small due to small variation in the crime rates.

This paper investigates the gender wage gap among German university graduates in their first job and five to six years into their careers. We find that women earn about 30% less than men at their first job and about 35% less after five to six years. Results from standard decomposition techniques show that 80% of the earnings gap in the first job can be attributed to differences in endowment of which between 74 and 78% are related to different fields of studies. Adding employer information leads to an explained share of about 90% of the earnings gap with fields of study still accounting for about half of the gap. These also play a dominant role in a model without employer information after five to six years, directly explaining between 26 and 33% of the earnings gap. Adding employer information, however, leads to insignificant results. Together with detailed information on experiences after graduation, these variables account for about 44 to 50% of the earnings gap later in the graduates careers.

This paper uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel of the years 2000 to 2005 to study the earnings differential between self- and dependent employed German men. Constructing a counterfactual earnings distribution for the self-employed German dependant employment and using quantile regression decompositions we find that the earnings differential over the distribution cannot be explained by differences in endowments. Furthermore, low-earning self-employed could earn more in dependent employment. Finally, the observed earnings advantage for the self-employed at the top of the earnings distribution os not associated with higher returns to observable variables.