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DIW Discussion Papers 1396 / 2014
We apply a structural model of mothers’ labor supply and child care choices to evaluate the effects of two childcare reforms in Germany that were introduced simultaneously in August 2013. First, a legal claim to subsidized child care became effective for all children aged one year or older. Second, a new benefit called ‘Betreuungsgeld’ came into effect that is granted to families who do not use public ...
2014| Kai-Uwe Müller, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 1389 / 2014
To counteract the financial pressure emerging in aging societies, statutory pay‐as‐you‐go pension schemes are undergoing fundamental reforms in many Western countries. Starting with cohort 1937, Germany introduced permanent pension deductions for early retirement. This paper examines the evolution of the profitability of pension contributions against the background of this reform for cohorts 1935‐1945. ...
2014| Holger Lüthen
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DIW Discussion Papers 1366 / 2014
Parental leave and subsidized child care are prominent examples of family policies supporting the reconciliation of family life and labor market careers for mothers. In this paper, we combine different empirical strategies to evaluate the employment effects of these policies for mothers in Germany. In particular we estimate a structural labor supply model and exploit a natural experiment, i.e. the ...
2014| Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 1361 / 2014
Stated survey measures of risk preferences are increasingly being used in the literature, and they have been compared to revealed risk aversion primarily by means of experiments such as lottery choice tasks. In this paper, we investigate educational choice, which involves the comparison of risky future income paths and therefore depends on risk and time preferences. In contrast to experimental settings, ...
2014| Frank M. Fossen, Daniela Glocker
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DIW Discussion Papers 1358 / 2014
Through an intertemporal budget constraint, jurisdictions may gain advantages in tax and spending competition by 'competing' on debt. While the existing spatial econometric literature focuses on tax and spending competition, very little is known about spatial interaction via public debt. This paper estimates the spatial interdependence of public debt among German municipalities using a panel on municipalities ...
2014| Frank M. Fossen, Ronny Freier, Thorsten Martin
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DIW Discussion Papers 1355 / 2014
Jobs offer different wages and different non-monetary working conditions. This paper investigates how the demand for non-monetary aspects evolves over changing wealth levels. Wages do not perfectly compensate individuals for differential utility of jobs in a labour market with informational frictions. Changes in wealth may then affect preferences for different jobs. Willingness to pay for non-monetary ...
2014| Luke Haywood
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DIW Discussion Papers 1340 / 2013
It is a longstanding debate whether members of parliament (MPs) should be allowed to follow sideline jobs in addition to their mandate. Critics claim that politicians already face binding time constraints and that moonlighting might lead to a neglect of inner-parliamentary duties. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether politicians with more sideline jobs show less effort inside ...
2013| Felix Arnold
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DIW Discussion Papers 1334 / 2013
The self-employed constitute a large proportion of the workforce in developing countries and the sector is growing. Different accounts exist as to the causes of this development, with pull factors such as high returns to capital contrasted with push factors such as barriers to more desirable salaried jobs. Using data from Ghana, we investigate the changing structure of earnings in self-employment relative ...
2013| Paolo Falco, Luke Haywood
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DIW Discussion Papers 1320 / 2013
This paper proposes a dynamic life cycle model of health risks, employment, early retirement, and wealth accumulation in order to analyze the health-related risks of consumption and old age poverty. In particular, the model includes a health process, the interaction between health and employment risks, and an explicit modeling of the German public insurance schemes. I rely on a dynamic programming ...
2013| Daniel Kemptner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1319 / 2013
Using a sample of Europeans aged 50+ from twelve countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we analyse the role of poor material conditions as a determinant of changes in health over a four-year period. We find that poverty defined with respect to relative incomes has no effect on changes in health. However, broader measures of poor material conditions such as subjective ...
2013| Maja Adena, Michal Myck