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Higher Tax Rates on Labor? Evidence from German Panel Data

This contribution investigates the justifiable spread between labor and capital income tax rates under a dual income tax, based on arguments put forth in Nielsen and Sørensen (1997). An efficient generalized instrumental variables estimator proposed by Hausman and Taylor (1981) is employed in a Mincer-type wage equation, which is estimated on recent data taken from the German Socio-Economic Panel. ...

How Do Germans React to the Commuting Allowance?

I research the consequences of changes in the deductibility of commuting costs in Germany from 2001 to 2006. Offícial figures provided by the Federal Statistical Office highlight the fact that German taxpayers claimed deductions for commuting allowances to the tune of 23-29 billion e over the years 2001-2004. Granting or not granting these deductions thus has wide ranging fiscal implications, a point ...

Three Essays on the Taxonometries of Labor Income (Dissertation)

Germany (Chapter 7)

Poverty Is a Public Bad: Panel Evidence from Subjective Well-Being Data

Previous research has found that subjective well-being (SWB) is lower for individuals classified as being in poverty. We extend the poverty-SWB literature by focusing on aggregate poverty. Using panel data for 39,239 individuals living in Germany from 2005–2013, we show that people's SWB is negatively correlated with the regional (state-level) poverty ratio while controlling for individual poverty ...

Income Comparison, Income Formation, and Subjective Well-Being: New Evidence on Envy versus Signaling

Drawing on the distinction between envy and signaling effects in income comparison, this paper uses panel data on subjective well-being from Germany over the period 1991–2009 to study whether the nature of income comparison has changed in the process of economic development and institutional change. We conceptualize a person's comparison income as the income predicted by indicators of her productivity ...

Re-engaging with Survey Non-respondents: The BHPS, SOEP and HILDA Survey Experience

Previous research into the correlates and determinants of non-response in longitudinal surveys has focused exclusively on why it is that respondents at one survey wave choose not to participate at future waves. This is very understandable if non-response is always an absorbing state, but in many longitudinal surveys, and certainly most household panels, this is not so. Indeed, in these surveys it is ...

Cultural Differences in Risk Tolerance

Risk aversion is of great importance on a microeconomic and a macroeconomic level. First of all, risk aversion is an important factor in explaining many everyday decisions. Among these are decisions to invest money in different types of assets, the decision to enter the labour market and others like the decision to move (Guiso and Paiella, 2004). As risk tolerance is so important in life, one asks ...

Determinants of risk tolerance

Risk aversion is an important factor in explaining many everyday decisions. Thus, one asks which determinants can explain different attitudes towards risk. Several studies show different risk attitudes with respect to gender, age, income, and wealth (e.g. [19]). While these findings are hardly controversial, there is still some uncertainty about the effect of culture on risk tolerance. Thus, the main ...

Does intermarriage change migrants’ preferences for the home country?

Motivations for migrants to return clearly change with integration, but the time-changing aspect of return migration has received little attention in the literature. This paper studies how migrants’ preferences for the home country change with intermarriage, i.e., marriage to a spouse from the host country. Specifically, I analyse the association between intermarriage and three outcomes related to ...