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Research Project
In this project, a top-corrected wealth distribution is estimated on the basis of the inheritance tax statistics and the SOEP. We analyze the concentration of wealth, the portfolios of the wealthy, the importance of inherited wealth, the gender inheritance gap and the gender wealth gap as well as reactions to inheritance taxation.
Current Project| Public Economics, German Socio-Economic Panel study
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Externe Monographien
This paper investigates the gender wealth gap using wealth recorded in the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Ranking women and men by their individual wealth reveals that the average gender wealth gap is driven by the large gap in the top tail. We find that the gender wealth gap widens during working age and closes during retirement. This is associated with men receiving higher inheritances and inter-vivos ...
Rochester :
SSRN,
2023,
29 S.
| Charlotte Bartels, Eva Sierminska, Carsten Schroeder
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Externe Monographien
By the end of the Second World War, an estimated 20 percent of the West German housing stock had been destroyed. Building on a theoretical lifecycle model of wealth accumulation, this paper examines the extent to which regional differences in destruction can explain differences in wealth today” – at the beginning of the 21st century. As our empirical basis, we link a unique historical dataset on the ...
Rochester :
SSRN,
2023,
80 S.
| Christoph Halbmeier, Carsten Schroeder
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Externe Monographien
While inequality of opportunity (IOp) in earnings is well studied, the literature on IOp in individual net wealth is scarce to non-existent. This is problematic because both theoretical and empirical evidence show that the position in the wealth and income distribution can significantly diverge. We measure ex-ante IOp in net wealth for Germany using data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Ex-ante ...
Bonn:
IZA,
2023,
54 S.
(Discussion Paper Series / Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit ; 16488)
| Daniel Graeber, Viola Hilbert, Johannes König
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Refereed essays Web of Science
In this study, we argue that parents’ class position may influence the type and timing of their offspring's investments in financial assets. These investments may facilitate net worth accumulation beyond direct transfers, contributing to the intergenerational reproduction of social positions. We test these expectations using retrospective life history and prospective panel data for 14 countries from ...
In:
Acta Sociologica
66 (2023), 2, S. 210-230
| Philipp M. Lersch, Olaf Groh-Samberg
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Externe Monographien
This study provides novel evidence about the pension wealth elasticity of employment. For the identification we exploit reform-induced variation of pension wealth that is related to the number of children but which does not affect the implicit tax rate of employment. We use a difference-in-differences estimator based on administrative data from the German pension insurance and find that, on average, ...
London:
IFS,
2023,
49 S.
(IFS Working Papers ; 23/01)
| Sebastian Becker, Hermann Buslei, Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan
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Diskussionspapiere 2066 / 2023
Who makes it to the top? We use the leading, socio-economic survey in Germany supplemented by extensive data on the rich to answer this question. We identify the key predictors for belonging to the top 1 percent of income, wealth, and both distributions jointly. Although we consider many, only a few traits matter: Entrepreneurship and self-employment in conjunction with a sizable inheritance of company ...
2023| Johannes König, Christian Schluter, Carsten Schröder
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Diskussionspapiere 2065 / 2023
This paper examines whether biased income expectations due to overconfidence lead to higher levels of debt-taking. We show suggestive evidence for a link between overconfidence and borrowing behavior in a representative survey of German households (GSOEP-IS). This motivates a laboratory experiment to study causality behind these effects. In two experiments, participants can purchase goods by borrowing ...
2023| Antonia Grohmann, Lukas Menkhoff, Christoph Merkle, Renke Schmacker
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DIW Weekly Report 50/51/52 / 2023
The recovery of the German economy is becoming an exercise in patience. In the third quarter of 2023 the economy fared worse than expected, in particular because private households continued to spend their money conservatively despite climbing wages and falling inflation. Both private consumption and overall economic output even declined slightly. Now the next challenge has arrived: In November 2023, ...
2023| Timm Bönke, Geraldine Dany-Knedlik, Guido Baldi, Hella Engerer, Pia Hüttl, Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Frederik Kurcz, Theresa Neef, Laura Pagenhardt, Werner Roeger, Marie Rullière, Jan-Christopher Scherer, Teresa Schildmann, Ruben Staffa, Kristin Trautmann
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Refereed essays Web of Science
This paper examines the effects of a unilateral reform of a redistributive tax-transfer system in an open economy. Compared to autarky, a tax increase leads to a smaller decline in aggregate income in the open economy, and it is also more effective at reducing income inequality, provided the tax rates are sufficiently low. Aggregating effects on income and income inequality using an Atkinson social ...
In:
Journal of International Economics
145 (2023), 103829, 22 S.
| Miriam Kohl, Philipp M. Richter