Life Expectancy,Schooling, and Lifetime Labor Supply: Theory and Evidence Revisited

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of the role of life expectancy for optimal schooling and lifetime labor supply. The results of a simple prototype Ben‐Porath model with age‐specific survival rates show that an increase in lifetime labor supply is not a necessary, or a sufficient, condition for greater life expectancy to increase optimal schooling. The observed increase in survival rates during working ages that follows from the “rectangularization” of the survival function is crucial for schooling and labor supply. The empirical results suggest that the relative benefits of schooling have been increasing across cohorts of U.S. men born between 1840 and 1930. A simple quantitative analysis shows that a realistic shift in the survival function can lead to an increase in schooling and a reduction in lifetime labor hours.     

The Jewish Emigration from the Former Soviet Union to Germany

Since the end of the 1980s a massive emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) can be observed. Israel and the United States were the most important receiving countries, followed by Germany, a comparatively new immigration destination for Jews from the successor states of the USSR. One of the reasons the German Government allowed the admission of Jews from post-Soviet states was the Jewish community's claim that this immigration might rejuvenate the German Jewish population in the longer run. Using an index of demographic aging (Billeter's J), the following article examines if this has actually happened. Findings suggest that immigration actually initiated a process of rejuvenation in the Jewish population in Germany. However, it was reversed during the end of the 1990s because of an unaffected low fertility.     

Exponential families of markov processes -part II: birth- and death processes

A common prior distribution and loss structure are set up to be appropriate for the sorting of batches using sampling inspection by variable and by attribute. Approxi¬mations to the exact optimal sampling plans are derived to gain a better understanding of BAYEsian sampling plans and to compare the plans using variable sampling and attribute sampling. It is assumed that the process quality distribution is normal with a known variance     

Does the online collection of ego-centered network data reduce data quality? An experimental comparison

We analyze whether differences in kind and quality of ego-centered network data are related to whether the data are collected online or offline. We report the results of two studies. In the first study respondents could choose between filling out ego-centered data through a web questionnaire and being probed about their network in a personalized interview. The second study used a design in which respondents were allocated at random to either online or offline data collection. Our results show that the data quality suffers from the online data collection and the findings indicate that this is the consequence of the respondents answering “mechanically”. We conclude that network researchers should avoid to simply copy traditional network items into a web questionnaire. More research is needed about how new design elements specific for web questionnaires can motivate respondents to fill out network questions properly.     

Hiring older workers and employing older workers: German evidence

Using German establishment data, we examine the relationship between delayed compensation, training, and hiring of older workers. Both those establishments that delay compensation and those with greater human capital requirements are less likely to hire older workers. We demonstrate that the routinely used control for the age of existing workers is endogenous and that instrumenting provides stronger evidence for the role of delayed compensation. Specifically, delayed compensation is simultaneously a negative determinant of hiring older workers but a positive determinant of employing older workers and, thus, more clearly associated with “employing older workers but not hiring them.”     

Health and economic development—evidence from the introduction of public health care

This paper investigates the causal effect of improvements in health on economic development using a long panel of European countries. Identification is based on the particular timing of the introduction of public health care systems in different countries, which is the random outcome of a political process. We document that the introduction of public health care systems had a significant immediate effect on health dynamics proxied by infant mortality and crude death rates. The findings suggest that health improvements had a positive effect on growth in income per capita and aggregate income.     

Der Fussballverein zwischen e.V. und Kapitalgesellschaft

The overcoming of the dilemma of members’ contribution and efficient goal attainment leads German soccer clubs to an organizational development process. Three patterns of overcoming this dilemma in clubs of the first German soccer league are discussed. After analyzing theoretical problems of clubs at the point of view of rational-choice-theory, we focus on the three patterns of overcoming the dilemma and illustrate each with a case study. For the case studies we choose three traditional soccer clubs from the Ruhr-area. The three patterns are: (1) The classical German club structure: In this case the control of the resource ‘provision of capital’ solves the dilemma ad hoc in favor of goal attainment. (2) The stock company structure without a joint investment structure: This pattern preserves the participation of the members only by representatives through the introduction of a supervisory board. (3) Limited liability company as the general partner of a public limited company (a typical German form of a joint stock company): In this pattern the soccer club is transformed into a company, which restricts the members’ participation possibilities to symbolic acts in favor of goal attainment. The organizational development process of the German soccer clubs leads in general to a democratic-flexible form of organization.