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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...

The Gender (Tax) Gap in Parental Transfers. Evidence from administrative inheritance and gift tax data.

This study examines how inheritance and gift tax systems in combination with gendered parental transfer behavior strengthen gender wealth inequalities. Gender differences in transfers can be reproduced if men benefit differently than women from tax exemptions. This might happen when men and women receive different types of assets where only some are tax exempted. To investigate gendered parental...

Strong Support for a Universal Basic Income, in Particular among Those Who Would Benefit

A representative survey from August 2022 confirms public support for a universal basic income (UBI): Between 45 and 55 percent of respondents are in favor of a universal basic income and the unconditional financial security it promises. Two representative surveys from August 2022 investigate who exactly UBI supporters are and which UBI model they prefer. The surveys show that younger people in particular ...

The Inequity Z: Income Fairness Perceptions in Europe across the Income Distribution

Using data from the European Social Survey, we examine income fairness evaluations of 17,605 respondents from 28 countries. Respondents evaluated the fairness of their own incomes as well as the fairness of the incomes of the top and bottom income deciles in their countries. Depicted on a single graph, these income fairness evaluations take on a Z-shaped form, which we call the "inequity Z". The inequity ...

Intergenerational Scars: The Impact of Parental Unemployment on Individual Health Later in Life

This paper studies whether individuals that experienced parental unemployment during their childhood/early adolescence have poorer health once they reach the adulthood. We used data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 2002 until 2018. Our identification strategy of the causal effect of parental unemployment relied on plant closures as exogenous variation of the individual labor market condition. ...

Cognitive Reflection and 2D:4D: Evidence from a Large Population Sample

Bosch-Domènech et al. (2014) reported a negative association between 2D:4D, a suggested marker of prenatal testosterone exposure, and the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) in a sample of 623 university students. In this pre-registered study, we test if we can replicate their findings in a general population sample of over 2,500 individuals from Germany. We find no statistically significant association ...

Tuition Fees and Educational Attainment

Following a landmark court ruling in 2005, more than half of Germany’s universities started charging tuition fees, which were later abolished in a staggered manner. We exploit the fact that even students who were already enrolled had to start paying fees. We show that fees increase study effort and degree completion among these students. However, fees also decrease first-time university enrollment ...

Family Care during the First COVID-19 Lockdown in Germany: Longitudinal Evidence on Consequences for the Well-Being of Caregivers

We examine changes in the well-being of family caregivers during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the SOEP-CoV study. The COVID-19 pandemic posed an extraordinary challenge for family caregivers, as care recipients are a high-risk group requiring special protection, and professional care services were severely cut back. ...

“Next steps for HANK” Workshop

Heterogeneous Agent Macroeconomics: Methods and Applications

The course provides participants with the tools to develop and analyze business cycle models with heterogenous agents. This class of models has become the new standard in the business cycle literature and allows to analyze the interaction of the business cycle and the distribution of consumption, income, and wealth. The focus of the course is on numerical methods. Coding exercises in class are an...