Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German SocioEconomic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science. Terms of use: Documents inThe decision to publish a submission in SOEPpapers is made by a board of editors chosen by the DIW Berlin to represent the wide range of disciplines covered by SOEP. There is no external referee process and papers are either accepted or rejected without revision. Papers appear in this series as works in progress and may also appear elsewhere. They often represent preliminary studies and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be requested from the author directly. The probability of becoming unemployed rises when workers are employed in Trade Sensitive industries and decreases for workers in Trade Gaining industries. Wage effects are statistically significant for three of four trade-exposed groups of industries, but they are relatively small. The personal characteristics of workers seem to exert a substantial effect on employment status and earnings level.JEL codes: F16, C23, J31, J63

<p class="MsoCommentText" style="margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Rankings enjoy growing popularity in the economical sciences. Well known institutions like the World Economic Forum, Heritage Foundation and the OECD make use of rankings to exert competitive pressure on the ranked countries. </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">To achieve any such desired effects rankings need to be accepted and approved as a whole, and in particular regarding the applied methodology.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;" lang="EN-GB"> </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In order to appeal to wide sections of the population scoring methods are applied to aggregate a composite indicator. Experience has shown that outliers have a distorting effect on the ranking order and therefore cause economically implausible results which are a target for criticism. For these reasons the choice of an adequate scoring method is of great importance. The applied technique should </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">provide a feature which enables it to mitigate the distorting effect of outliers </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">without the necessity for an arbitrarily elimination of data points. Although scoring methods have a high influence on ranking results, scientific analysis is often more concerned with the optimal choice of indicators or the weighting scheme, whereas the impact of extreme values is not addressed. According to this, the present research is related to the question which scoring method is the best choice in the presence of outliers. Evidence is given, that Logistic Function Methods have the ability to mitigate outlier distortion effects. The analysis </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB">approaches the issue considering two aspects:</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> It combines the theoretically derivation of scoring methods&rsquo; statistic strengths and weaknesses for the ranking process and highlights the bootstrap technique to assess the validity of score results in the presence of outliers. </span></span></p>

Life satisfaction in Germany has decreased since 2001 in contrast to increasing material prosperity. This paper provides evidence that publicly and privately provided social security measures contribute to the explanation of this development. The analysis is based on survey data of the Socio-Economic Panel for the period from 1992-2007 and is conducted by an Ordered Logit Model and an OLS Model with individual fixed effects. The results offer suggestions for economic policy as they indicate that public and private social spending matters. Concerns about job security and the respondents' financial situation clearly reduce life satisfaction. Evidence is provided that perceived social security strongly depends on net household income and employment which are at the same time the basis for public social spending and private insurance against risks. Copyright 2010 die Autoren. Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik 2010 Verein für Socialpolitik.

No abstract

No abstract