Public Economics Department Research Projects

A new occupational disability insurance in the statutory pension insurance scheme

A large group of people is unable to keep up with the increasing retirement age and remain in the workforce until retirement for health reasons. The disability pension that exists today is only suitable to a limited extent to protect this group. The decisive factor for the reduced earning capacity is not the last activity performed, but all activities "under the usual conditions of the general...

A regionally differentiated climate dividend in Germany

Experiences with the regionally differentiated climate dividend in Austria in terms of effectiveness, acceptance and feasibility in the administration. Contribution of a regionally differentiated climate dividend to the acceptance of climate policy (social compatibility and efficiency) Transferability of the Austrian concept and experiences with implementation to Germany.

An empirical analysis of non-take up of social assistance for the elderly

The aim of the research project was to non-take-up of social assistance for the elderly. The analysis is based on the Socio-economic Panel (SOEP). Using a microsimulation model (STSM) developed at DIW Berlin, it was determined on the basis of survey data from the previous year (including income and property information, household context, living situation, health situation, household equipment)...

Career penalties of long term-care provision

It is the aim of the project to analyze the labor market consequences of informal care provision. For the identification we follow the literature on childcare penalties (see Kleven et al. 2019) to quantify the short- and long-run career costs of childcare. Rellstab et al. (2020) for the Netherlands and Halla et al. (2021) for Austria have applied this framework to estimate the career effects for...

Climate dividends and public support for carbon pricing

With the increasing urgency to address climate change, understanding public sentiment is crucial for designing effective and socially acceptable environmental policies. Despite the existence of effective tools for the green transition, a significant obstacle for policymakers lies in the lack of public support, hindering their ability to utilize these tools effectively. One tool that has been...

Distribution effects and incentive effects of coordinated climate and social policy

The aim of this research project is the development and empirical evaluation of climate and social policy instruments, which on the one hand contribute to achieving climate neutrality by 2045, and on the other hand could be implemented in a socially compatible way. The focus is on empirical analysis of the distribution and incentive effects including their interactions which are evaluated by...

Economic Insights: Transfer and Capacity Building

The INSIGHTS project  aims to support and promote the communication of research and to contribute to its transfer to the public. INSIGHTS is funded by the Leibniz Gemeinschaft. INSIGHTS has two main pillars, a platform of exchange between researchers, policymakers, the media, and the public, and the provision of professional guidance and formal training on how to interact with the public and...

Female labor supply and fertility in times of demographic change (FemLab)

Financing basic income

Scenarios for financing an unconditional basic income are being developed in the project. Furthermore, the revenue and distribution effects of basic income and financing options are analyzed.

GETTSIM – Contributions to an Open Source Tax- and Transfers Simulator

This project serves to further develop the open source software GETTSIM. GETTSIM is a simulation model written in the programming language Python, which can depict the German tax and transfer system. The software offers a multitude of applications in research and teaching. It is developed in cooperation with the IZA (Institute of Labor Economics) as well as other German research institutes and...

Inheritance tax reform

The aim of this research project is to examine the revenue and distribution effects of inheritance tax reforms proposed.The tax privileges for business assets (including the exemption requirement test) and for rented apartments are to be abolished. In order to reduce liquidity impact the tax liability is to be deferred or annuitized with interest. Furthermore, personal allowances and the tax rate...

Junior research group “Time policy – how can social policy help to manage critical phases over the life course?”

The research group is concerned with time policy as one element of social policy. Time policy allows individuals and households to cope with time conflicts during critical phases in their employment biographies. Time policy includes measures and benefits that enable employees to use their time resources according to their preferences, irrespective of their income. We identify critical phases in...

Long term care and migration

Organizing long-term care (LTC) is one of the most pressing challenges for the coming years, both societally and politically. Across OECD countries, the proportion of individuals aged 80 and above will increase from an average of nearly five to almost ten percent of the population by 2050 (OECD, 2020). This rapid aging will have sizable implications for the demand and provision of LTC. The issue...

Netspar - Flexible combinations of work and retirement

Populism and Narratives of Social Mobility

The rise of populism continues to shake numerous Western democracies, often leading to exclusionary or authoritarian tendencies (Mudde, 2004). This is evident in events such as the US Capitol storming in January 2021 and the attempted coup in Germany in December 2022. The destabilizing threat to democratic institutions across the EU and the US underscores the importance of understanding populism’s...

Rationality and Competition: The Economic Performance of Individuals and Firms

The Collaborative Research Center Transregio “Rationality and Competition” combines the research programs of behavioral and neoclassical economists to study applied economic questions that are of high policy relevance. The focus CRC TRR 190 is on the economic behavior and performance of individuals and firms: How do systematic biases in expectations, decision processes, and preferences affect the...

Role model Austria - What lessons can be learned for the design of old-age provision in Germany?

In the project, the differences between the German and Austrian pension systems are to be systematized and analyzed on the basis of administrative microdata and dynamic simulation models. In contrast to the previous use of stylized biographies or empirical averages, the added value of the project lies in the analysis based on microdata as well as in the differentiated consideration of individual...

The role of inherited wealth for wealth inequality in Germany

In this project, a top-corrected wealth distribution is estimated on the basis of the inheritance tax statistics and the SOEP. We analyze the concentration of wealth, the portfolios of the wealthy, the importance of inherited wealth, the gender inheritance gap and the gender wealth gap as well as reactions to inheritance taxation.

Unequal ageing: life-expectancy, care needs and reforms to the welfare state

The main objective of this project is to analyse how inequalities in old age have developed over time and birth cohorts, to what extent public policies have influenced these trends, and to assess the potential of sociopolitical reforms to reduce such inequalities. This project analyses and compares data and sociopolitical reforms (retirement and longterm care) from North America (Canada), Western...

Work and disability in old age: restriction and incentives

We conduct a stated preference experiment to analyze the effects of pension incentives, increasing retirement age, and provision of a partial retirement scheme on individuals’ preferences to work parttime and full-time beyond the early and legal retirement ages. We conduct the experiment in Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United States for an international comparative analysis.