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DIW Discussion Papers 920 / 2009
The well-documented positive correlation between income risk and wealth was interpreted as evidence for high amounts of precautionary wealth in various studies. However, the large estimates emerged from pooling non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs without controlling for heterogeneity. This paper provides evidence for Germany based on representative panel data including private wealth balance sheets. ...
2009| Frank M. Fossen, Davud Rostam-Afschar
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DIW Discussion Papers 900 / 2009
Several empirical minimum wage studies have recently been published that simulate employment effects of a federal minimum wage in Germany. We disentangle various factors that explain the variation in previous simulation results. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the newly available "Verdienststrukturerhebung 2006" we conduct robustness analyses that systematically test the range ...
2009| Kai-Uwe Müller
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DIW Discussion Papers 893 / 2009
In this paper I evaluate the effect of student aid on the success of academic studies. I focus on two dimensions, the duration of study and the probability of actually graduating with a degree. While there is an extensive literature on the impact of student aid on its intended outcome, the uptake of tertiary education, the impact on the outcome and on study incentives has been mainly ignored. But introducing ...
2009| Daniela Glocker
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DIW Discussion Papers 877 / 2009
We estimate a dynamic structural life-cycle model of employment, non-employment and retirement that includes endogenous accumulation of human capital and intertemporal non- separabilities in preferences. Additionally, the model accounts for the effect of the tax and transfer system on work incentives. The structural parameter estimates are used to evaluate the effects of a tax reform targeted at low ...
2009| Peter Haan, Victoria Prowse
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DIW Discussion Papers 855 / 2009
We estimate the impact of effective profit taxation on the financial leverage of corporations on the basis of a pseudo-panel constructed from corporate tax return micro data for the period 1998-2001, a period which saw the introduction of a major corporate tax reform in Germany. The financial leverage is measured by the ratio of long-term debt to total capital. Endogeneity of the effective corporate ...
2009| Nadja Dwenger, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 839 / 2008
The empirical finding that entrepreneurs tend to invest a large share of their wealth in their own firms despite comparably low returns and high risk has become known as the private equity premium puzzle. This paper provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that lower risk aversion of entrepreneurs, and not necessarily credit constraints, may explain this puzzle. The analysis is based on a large, ...
2008| Frank M. Fossen
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DIW Discussion Papers 838 / 2008
In this paper we develop a discrete model of optimal taxation of married couples and empirically discuss the optimality of income taxation for this group. To this end, we derive the social welfare function which guarantees that joint taxation of married couples is optimal. We will contrast this welfare function with the one that makes a system of individual taxation optimal. For the empirical application ...
2008| Peter Haan, Dolores Navarro
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DIW Discussion Papers 829 / 2008
We estimate the elasticity of corporate taxable income with respect to the effective corporate tax rate on the basis of a pseudo-panel constructed from corporate tax return micro data for the period 1998-2001, a period which saw the introduction of a major corporate tax reform in Germany. Endogeneity of the effective tax rate is controlled for by an instrumental variable approach. Our instrument for ...
2008| Nadja Dwenger, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 827 / 2008
We analyse preferences for public, private or mixed provision of childcare theoretically and empirically. We model childcare as a publicly provided private good. Richer households should prefer private provision to either pure public or mixed provision. If public provision redistributes from rich to poor, they should favour mixed over pure public provision, but if public provision redistributes from ...
2008| Rainald Borck, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 805 / 2008
We estimate the elasticity of enrollment into higher education with respect to the amount of means tested student aid (BAfoeG) provided by the federal government using the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). Potential student aid is derived on the basis of a detailed taxbenefit microsimulation model. Since potential student aid is a highly non-linear and discontinuous function of parental income, the ...
2008| Viktor Steiner, Katharina Wrohlich