We compute participation tax rates across the EU and find that work disincentives inherent in tax-benefit systems largely depend on household composition and the individual's earner role within the household. We then estimate participation elasticities using an IV group estimator that enables us to investigate the responsiveness of individuals to work incentives. We contribute to the literature on ...
German history over the past 125 years has been turbulent. Marked by two world wars, revolutions and major regime changes, as well as a hyperinflation and three currency reforms, expropriations and territorial divisions, it provides unique insights into the role of country-specific shocks in shaping long-run wealth dynamics. This paper presents the first comprehensive study of wealth and its distribution ...
We have developed and implemented a new sampling strategy to better represent very wealthy individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our strategy is based on the empirical regularity that the very wealthy have at least part of their assets invested in businesses, and that businesses document shares of relevant shareholders in their books. Our results show that combined analysis of the ...
Im fünften Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung wurde darauf hingewiesen, dass die Datenlage im Bereich hoher Vermögen unzureichend sei (BMAS, 2017). Zur Verbesserung der Datenlage haben wir eine neue Sampling-Strategie entwickelt und im Feld implementiert. In der gezogenen Stichprobe sind Personen mit hohem Vermögen überrepräsentiert. Die neue Stichprobe wird entsprechend in das Sozio-oekonomische ...
Redistribution across individuals in a one-year-period framework is an empirically intensely studied question. However, a substantial share of annual redistribution might turn out to serve individual insurance in a longer perspective. In particular, public pensions, that smooth incomes over the life-cycle and are funded by high taxes, play an increasingly important role in welfare states with aging ...
Das Ausmaß der Vermögenskonzentration in Deutschland lässt sich aufgrund der stark eingeschränkten Datenlage zu hohen Vermögen kaum abschätzen. Dementsprechend sieht auch der fünfte Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung weiteren Bedarf, die Datenlage in diesem Bereich zu verbessern (Bundesregierung, 2017). Wir haben eine Machbarkeitsstudie durchgeführt, in der ein innovatives Konzept entwickelt, ...
High-worth individuals are typically underrepresented or completely missing in population surveys. The lack of a register-based sampling frame on high-worth individuals in many countries challenged previous attempts to sample high-worth individuals in voluntary scientific surveys. In a novel research design, we draw on register data on the shareholding structures of companies as a sampling frame. Our ...
Household survey data provide a rich information set on income, household context and demographic variables, but tend to under report incomes at the very top of the distribution. Administrative data like tax records offer more precise information on top incomes, but at the expense of household context details and incomes of non-filers at the bottom of the distribution. We combine the benefits of the ...
Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to hamper employment. This paper investigates the importance of incentives inherent in the tax-benefit system for the individual decision to take up work. Using German microdata over the period 1993-2010 we find that recent reforms in Germany increased work incentives at the extensive margin measured by the ...
Generous income support programs as provided by European welfare states have often been blamed to reduce work incentives for the lowskilled and to increase durations of unemployment. Standard studies measure work incentives based on annual income concepts. This paper analyzes work incentives inherent in the German tax-benefit system when extending the time horizon to three years (long-term). Participation ...