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Abolishing the final withholding tax leads to tax revenue losses and barely burdens high-income groups

Small revenue and distribution effects – Overall, slight tax revenue losses due to a period of low interest rates – Raising the final withholding tax rate to over 25 percent would result in moderate additional revenue Abolishing the final flat-rate 25 percent withholding tax on unearned income makes sense neither from a fiscal nor a distribution point of view as long as interest rates ...

Alumnus of the DIW Graduate Center awarded tenured professorship at Cornell University

Nicolas R. Ziebarth (35), a student of the DIW Graduate Center’s first class, was promoted to “Associate Professor with indefinite tenure” in the Department for Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (USA). Ziebarth’s area of research is applied health and labor economics. “It’s especially remarkable for an economist with a Ph.D. ...

UNFCCC Side Event at COP23: Policy Design for a Climate Friendly Materials Sector

Basic materials, such as aluminium, cement and steel, are important inputs for the construction of infrastructure and buildings, as well as manufacturing of industrial products. Their primary production is, however, carbon intensive, and in Europe is responsible for the dominant share of industrial emissions, equivalent to 16% of overall greenhouse gas emissions. A portfolio of “climate...

Closing the gap between research and action: zero carbon transport is achievable but there is not much sign of delivery

Debriefing COP 23 – What has been achieved in Bonn and what is needed for COP 24?

In a challenging political context, with the US announcement to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the COP23 in Bonn has a long list of issues to tackle, most notably the process to establish a rule book for the Paris Agreement. The Fiji presidency, representing the many vulnerable countries suffering from climate change impacts, urges for more adaptation support and for recognition of losses and...

The Structure and Integration of the European Buyout Industry

Der europäische Markt für Finanzbeteiligungen ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten stark expandiert. In den Jahren 2010–2016 betrug das Marktvolumen durchschnittlich mehr als 50 Milliarden Euro im Jahr. Dieser Artikel untersucht Kapitalflüsse innerhalb Europas als auch zwischen Europa und dem Rest der Welt. Dabei wird zwischen zwei Ebenen unterschieden, nämlich einerseits der Bereitstellung von Kapital an ...

Innovation and Investment Funding in the Post-Crisis Period: Have Financing Patterns and Financial Constraints of German Firms Changed?

Diese Studie untersucht das aktuelle Finanzierungsverhalten deutscher innovativer Unternehmen vor und nach der Finanzkrise. Speziell untersuchen wir, ob sich die Finanzierungsstruktur und finanzielle Restriktionen der deutschen kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen (KMU) seit der Finanzkrise verändert haben. Der Zweck unserer Analyse ist es, zu beurteilen, ob die Ziele des europäischen CMU-Aktionsplans, ...

The Rising Longevity Gap by Lifetime Earnings: Distributional Implications for the Pension System

This study uses German social security records to provide novel evidence about the heterogeneity in life expectancy by lifetime earnings and, additionally, documents the distributional implications of this earnings-related heterogeneity. We find a strong association between lifetime earnings and life expectancy at age 65 and show that the longevity gap is increasing across cohorts. For West German ...

Capital Taxation and Government Debt Policy with Public Discounting

This paper characterizes capital taxation and public debt policy in a quantitative macroeconomic model with an impatient government and uncertainty. The government has access to linear taxes on capital and labor, and to non-state-contingent bonds. Government impatience generates positive and empirically realistic longrun levels of both capital taxes and public debt. Prior predictive analysis shows ...

Thinking about Tomorrow? Predicting Experimental Choice Behavior and Life Outcomes from a Survey Measure of Present Bias

Using a representative sample of the German adult population, this paper investigates the extent to which a survey measure of present bias predicts present-biased choice behavior in incentive-compatible experiments and real-world outcomes related to in-vestments in financial assets and human capital. The results are threefold. First, the survey and experimental measures of present bias are significantly ...