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DIW Discussion Papers 1137 / 2011
The idea of higher wealth taxes to finance the mounting public debt in the wake of the financial crises is gaining ground in several OECD countries. We evaluate the revenue and distributional effects of a one-time capital levy on personal net wealth that is currently on the German political agenda. We use survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and estimate the net wealth distribution ...
2011| Stefan Bach, Martin Beznoska, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1136 / 2011
A recent literature has used variation just around deterministic legislative population thresholds to identify the causal effects of institutional changes. This paper reviews the use of regression discontinuity designs using such population thresholds. Our concern involves three arguments: (1) simultaneous exogenous (co-)treatment, (2) simultaneous endogenous choices and (3) manipulation and precise ...
2011| Florian Ade, Ronny Freier
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DIW Discussion Papers 1121 / 2011
This paper explores the interdependency of political institutions from the voter's perspective. Specifically, we are interested in three questions: (1) Does the partisan identity of the local mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election?; (2) Does this partisan identity influence in ensuing higher level elections?; and (3) Do voters condition their vote for the mayor ...
2011| Florian Ade, Ronny Freier
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DIW Discussion Papers 1113 / 2011
This paper systematically investigates whether different kinds of personality characteristics influence entrepreneurial development. On the basis of a large, representative household panel survey, we examine the extent to which the Big Five traits and further personality characteristics, which are more specifically related to entrepreneurial tasks, influence entry into self-employment and survival ...
2011| Marco Caliendo, Frank M. Fossen, Alexander S. Kritikos
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DIW Discussion Papers 1111 / 2011
The very first minimum wage in Germany was introduced in 1997 for blue-collar workers in sub-sectors of the construction industry. In the setting of a natural experiment blue-collar workers in neighboring 4-digit-industries and white-collar workers are used as control groups for differences-in-differences-in-differences estimation based on linked employer-employee data. Estimation results reveal a ...
2011| Pia Rattenhuber
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DIW Discussion Papers 1100 / 2011
A personal bankruptcy law that allows for a "fresh start" after bankruptcy reduces the individual risk involved in entrepreneurial activity. On the other hand, as risk shifts to creditors who recover less of their credit after a debtor's bankruptcy, lenders may charge higher interest rates or ration credit supply, which can hamper entrepreneurship. Both aspects of a more forgiving personal bankruptcy ...
2011| Frank M. Fossen
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DIW Discussion Papers 1085 / 2010
Experimental evidence reveals that there is a strong willingness to trust and to act in both positively and negatively reciprocal ways. So far it is rarely analyzed whether these variables of social cognition influence everyday decision making behavior. We focus on entrepreneurs who are permanently facing exchange processes in the interplay with investors, sellers, and buyers, as well as needing to ...
2010| Marco Caliendo, Frank M. Fossen, Alexander S. Kritikos
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DIW Discussion Papers 1083 / 2010
This paper empirically investigates distributional and welfare effects of Germany's year 2000 income tax reform. The reform is simulated in an ex-ante behavioral microsimulation approach. Dead weight loss of changes in capital income taxation is estimated in a structural model for household savings and asset demand applied to German survey data. Significant reductions in tax rates result in income ...
2010| Richard Ochmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1074 / 2010
The aim of this paper is to apply recently proposed individual welfare measures in the context of random utility models of labour supply. Contrary to the standard practice of using reference preferences and wages, these measures preserve preference heterogeneity in the normative step of the analysis. They also make the ethical priors, implicit in any interpersonal comparison, more explicit. On the ...
2010| André Decoster, Peter Haan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1065 / 2010
The amendment to the German Trade and Crafts Code in 2004 offers a natural experiment to asses the causal effects of this reform on the probabilities of being self-employed and transition into and out of self-employment, using cross-sections (2002-2006) of German microcensus data. This study applies the difference-in-differences technique in logit models for four occupational groups. Easing the educational ...
2010| Davud Rostam-Afschar