Daniel Kamhöfer and Hendrik Schmitz, "Reanalyzing Zero Returns to
Education in Germany", Journal of Applied Econometrics, Vol. 31, No. 5,
2016, pp. 912-919.

This paper uses two data sources: the German Socio-economic Panel
(SOEP), and administrative data taken from the German Statistical
Year Books. Both data sources are explained below.

German data protection law forbids the online publication of SOEP
data. Researchers can apply for use of the data as described below.

All program files used to prepare the data and to run the estimations
are provided in the file ks-programs.zip. Since the .do files are
ASCII files in DOS format, Unix/Linux users should use "unzip -a".

Please address any questions to:

Daniel Kamhöfer
University of Duisburg-Essen

Email: daniel.kamhoefer@uni-due.de
Tel.:  +49 201 183-6831
Fax:   +49 201 183-3716


ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

Information on the number of schools and the number of students are
taken form the German Statistical Year Books (various issues,
1952--1992). The Year books can be assessed here:

http://www.digizeitschriften.de/dms/toc/?PPN=PPN514402342

The data are on federal state level and not affected by data
protection law. The file "external_information" provides schooling
information used in the paper. The first line is the variable name as
used in the program files. Lines 2 to 217 contain the information
given in the columns per year and federal state.

Columns (1) to (3) give the number of schools by track. (1) basic
track, (2) intermediate track, (3) academic track.

Column (4) contains the total number of students over all tracks and
school years.

Columns (5) to (7) state the average number of students per school by
track. (5) basic track, (6) intermediate track, (7) academic track.

Column (8) gives the area of the federal state. The area varies only
across states but not over time. In order to make the merging of the
data sets easier, the area is included per year as well.

Columns (9) to (11) contain information to connect the administrative
data with individual level SOEP data. Column (9) gives the year, (10)
the federal state, and (11) the unique state-year identifier.

There are two versions of the file "external_information".
"external_information.txt" is an ASCII file in DOS format. It is
included in the file ks-programs.zip. "external_information.xlsx" is
an Excel file.


GERMAN SOCIO-ECONOMIC PANEL DATA

Main data source: German "Socio-Economic Panel", wave W, interview
year 2006. Website:

http://www.diw.de/en/diw_02.c.221178.en/about_soep.html

Contact information:

	  The German Socio-Economic Panel
          DIW Berlin
          Mail: 10108 Berlin, Germany
          Visitors: Mohrenstraße 58, 10117 Berlin, Germany
          Tel: +49 30 / 89789 -292
          Fax: +49 30 / 89789 -109
          Email: soepmail@diw.de (SOEP-Hotline)
	         soepoffice@diw.de (SOEP-Office)

Distribution of the SOEP data is only through the SOEP research data
center. All users need to sign a data distribution contract. Signing
the contract is free. For users within the European Economic Area
(including Switzerland), the SOEP data set is provided on DVD at a
price of € 30 (plus € 8 shipping and handling). For users
outside the European Economic Area (including Switzerland), German
data protection regulations allow only a reduced access. For these
users the Cornell University distributes the data. In this case, the
fee for first-time use is $ 125. For all users, the use of the SOEP
data is limited to scientific research purposes; commercial use of the
data is forbidden.

For users within the European Economic Area and Switzerland, the
application form for the data distribution contract is available here:

www.diw.de/documents/dokumentenarchiv/17/diw_01.c.88926.de/soep_application_contract_new.pdf

Non-European Economic Area users can receive a specific application
form here

www.diw.de/documents/dokumentenarchiv/17/diw_01.c.43545.de/cornell_order_form_2011-1.464057.pdf

If the SOEP data distribution contract was permitted, researchers can
order a DVD with the original data here:

http://www.diw.de/en/diw_02.c.222836.en/access.html