Vorträge des DIW Berlin

The Incidence of Social Security Contributions: Evidence from German Administrative Data

This paper applies a test for the incidence of social security contributions based on the reaction of gross wages in response to a variation in social security contributions. Exploiting an increase of the East German taxable maximum of health insurance, a difference-in-differences approach is used to estimate its effects on yearly changes in gross wages. It is shown that employees earning somewhat...

Day Care Quality and Differences in Children's Health and Personality Characteristics

Day care attendance is an early investment in children¿s human capital accumulation. Yet studies examining the effect of day care participation on later outcomes such as secondary schooling or non-cognitive skills identify mixed results. In the economic literature day care attendance has positive and negative effects on educational outcomes. These contradictive results might be due to unobserved...

Armed Conflict, Sex Ratio and Marital Outcomes: Evidence from Rwanda

We use armed conflict in Rwanda as a natural experiment to study the impact of a decrease in the sex ratio on the marriage market. Combining detailed information on conflict intensity with pre- and post-war individual-level data, we find several effects of the shortage of middle-aged men in the marriage market. First, fewer men remained single in the post-war period, while more middle-aged women...

Heterogeneity in Tax-Motivated Profit Shifting and Its Effects on Corporate Investment

This study provides evidence on the causal impact of debt shifting activities of multinational companies on capital accumulation. My identification strategy exploits the corporate tax reform 2008 in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment. This reform reduced the corporate income tax rate by 10 percentage points. Depending on the location of the parent company, the reform abolished the tax incentive...

The Effects of Disintegrated Distribution

Wo(men) at Work? The Impact of Cohabiting and Married Partners' Earnings on Women's Work Hours

This study investigates the determinants of women¿s labor supply in the household context. The main focus is on the effect of a change in male partner¿s wages on women¿s work hours. This is linked to the broader question of whether married and cohabiting women make different economic decisions and respond differently to changes in their partners¿ wages. In addition, this study seeks to connect the...

Choice Behavior in an Optimal Stopping Task

In this paper we examine behavior in an optimal stopping task. We derive novel theoretical predictions under different theories of dynamic behavior and then examine their empirical validity in the laboratory. We show that the well-known result that the optimal strategy for risk-neutral agents is a path-independent cut-off strategy can be generalized to the entire class of expected utility (EU)...

Information Sharing in Competitive Insurance Markets

We rationalize a special type of sharing information which can typically be found in markets for occupational disability insurances. There, firms share information about acceptances and rejections of an applicant. We set up a multiple-step signalling model with uninformed agents and endogenize competing principals' decisions to acquire information on risk types. We formalize the idea that...

Voters Prefer More Qualified Mayors, But Does It Matter for Public Finances? Evidence for Germany

Heterogeneity in Tax-Motivated Profit Shifting and Its Effects on Corporate Investment

European Electricity Grid Infrastructure Expansion in a 2050 Context

Merchant and Regulated Transmission Investment: The Case of the Baltic Sea Region

Combining Feed-in Tariffs and Tenders to Support Renewable Electricity

The Infrastructure Implications of the Energy Transformation in Europe until 2030 / 2050

The Future of Natural Gas in a Global Perspective: Resources, Trade, and Climate Constraints

National-Strategic Investment in European Electricity Transmission Capacity

Trends in the Natural Gas Industry: Prices, Contracts, and Geopolitics

Estimating Price Elasticities of Supply for the US Natural Gas Market

The Double-Dividend of Market Power Rents and Climate Change Mitigation: A Rationale for the Australian Coal Policy?

Towards Optimal Regulation of Transmission Network Investment under Renewable Integration