German companies view high and uncertain electricity prices a major challenge. A Renewable Energy Pool (RE-Pool), wherein the favorable conditions of competitive tenders for new wind and solar power projects are passed on to electricity consumers, could hedge such price risks. Consumers’ electricity prices are thus hedged for the share of their consumption that corresponds to the RE-Pool’s generation ...
We investigate if and how adverse life events – early widowhood, divorce, disability, job loss - trigger informal insurance responses in the form of intervivos gifts. Drawing from Dutch register data, we construct comprehensive panels comprising individuals undergoing such shocks in the period 2011-2017, and we analyse the patterns of gift receipt surrounding these events. We run separate event...
Research on parental school choice provides strong evidence of so-called ‘white flight’ – that ethnic majority parents avoid choosing a local school if it contains large numbers of ethnic minority students. In this study, we examine such segregating choices in a formally stratified school system. Theoretically, we argue that segregating choices are less common in an educational setting where...
The success of climate policies depends crucially on the dynamics of public support. Using unique longitudinal data from three surveys conducted between 2019 and 2022, we study the variations of public support for carbon pricing in Germany. The period includes two relevant events: the introduction and ramping up of carbon pricing in Germany and the exogenous increase in energy prices following the...
Fierce debate over the feasibility of cardinally measuring utility – or ‘wellbeing’ – with surveys has recently resurfaced. Several prominent papers claimed that when interpreting survey data as strictly ordinal, most of the literature’s results are easily reversed. We systematically assess this claim. To do so, we replicate the universe of wellbeing research published in top economics journals...
Using panel data from Understanding Society, this paper presents a methodology for conceptualising and measuring poor-quality employment in the UK as a distinct concept from job quality. This allows us to identify the most vulnerable employed workers in the UK. Key to this approach is the recognition that poor employment conditions exacerbate each other leading to more intense levels of...
Current developments in the labor income distribution shape the business cycle and the transmission of fiscal and monetary policy measures. During economic crises, timely and well targeted economic policy becomes essential but the volatility of the (labor) income distribution is particularly high. Detailed distributional data on household incomes becomes available after one year at the earliest....
Financial repression lowers the return on government debt and contributes, all else equal, towards its liquidation. However, its full effect on the debt-to-GDP ratio hinges on how repression impacts the economy at large because it alters investment and saving decisions. We develop and estimate a New Keynesian model with financial repression. Based on U.S. data for the period 1948–1974, we find, consistent ...
