Topic Distribution

9th BCCP Research Day

Leibniz ScienceCampusBerlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP) Research Day At this BCCP Research Day (formerly known as BCCP Forum), Fellows will give short pitches of their current research. Since we also want to have enough time for discussions and networking, we plan long coffee breaks between the presentation sessions as well as get-together afterwards. The event will bring together all...

Livestream: Social Mobility as a Key to Success for Economic Transformation and Reform

Social mobility and equal opportunity are key to thriving societies and economies. In the aftermath of the pandemic and in the context of increasing prices, calls for policymakers to address social and economic inequalities are intensifying. The recently launched Observatory on Social Mobility and Equal Opportunity not only brings together all OECD data points, but also displays the impact of...

The Price of Natural Gas Dependency: Price Shocks, Inequality, and Public Policy

The 2022 natural gas price spikes across Europe raised concerns regarding their distributional consequences. This paper investigates the distributional effect of price increases between and, in particular, within different income groups in Germany, accounting for different determinants of gas expenditures. The study finds that low-income households are affected the most by the gas price increase. Low-income ...

The Role of Carbon Pricing in Promoting Material Recycling: A Model of Multi-Market Interactions

Recycling of raw material can make a significant contribution to achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Carbon pricing can encourage material recycling by making it more competitive with waste incineration and primary material production. However, accounting for the interactions among different markets in a theoretical model, this paper finds that carbon pricing on material manufacturing alone does ...

The Effect of Increasing Retirement Age on Households’ Savings and Consumption Expenditure

This paper examines how households adjust their savings and consumption expenditure in response to an anticipated increase in the early retirement age (ERA). We examine the 1999 pension reform in Germany, which increased the ERA for women born after 1951 by at least three years. First, we present suggestive evidence that women update their retirement planning in response to the reform. Using the German ...

A Tale of Two Data Sets: Comparing German Administrative and Survey Data Using Wage Inequality as an Example

The IAB’s Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) are the two data sets most commonly used to analyze wage inequality in Germany. While the SIAB is based on administrative reports by employers to the social security system, the SOEP is a survey data set in which respondents self-report their wages. Both data sources have their specific advantages and ...

Gender Care Gap and Gender Pay Gap Increase Substantially until Middle Age

While the gender pay gap between men and women in Germany remains at 18 percent, this figure is not the same for all employees. There are, for example, major differences by age. Beginning at age 30, the gender pay gap increases sharply and remains constantly high at 20 percent until retirement. Closely related to this is the gender care gap, the difference in unpaid care work between women and men. ...

Effectiveness and Heterogeneous Effects of Purchase Grants for Electric Vehicles

We evaluate German purchase subsidies for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) using data on new vehicle registrations in Germany during 2015-2022. We account for confounding time trends and interacting EU-level CO2 standards using neighboring countries as a control group. The program was cost-ineffective, as only 40% of BEV and 25% of PHEV registrations were ...

Basic Income - From Vision to Creeping Transformation of the Welfare State

Midijob Reform: Increased Redistribution in Pension Insurance – Noticeable Costs, Relief Not Well Targeted

The German Federal Government has expanded subsidies for employees with low gross wages (midijob employees) as of January 1, 2023, and raised the upper earnings limit to 2,000 euros. As a result, around 6.2 million midijob employees will benefit from paying reduced social security contributions while still receiving their full pension entitlements, made possible by a redistribution within the social ...