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The Interest Elasticity of Household Savings: A Structural Approach with German Micro Data

This paper empirically investigates the effects of changes in the interest rate as well as in the current and expected future consumer price levels on households' consumption-savings decision. In a structural demand model applied to German consumption data, we use cross-sectional and longitudinal variation in prices and tax rates to construct individual after-tax interest rates and cluster-specific ...

Inheritance in Germany 1911 to 2009: A Mortality Multiplier Approach

We estimate the size of inheritance and gift flows in Germany for selected years over the last century, applying the methodology used by Piketty (2011) for France and combining national accounts, tax statistics and survey data (mainly the German Socio-Economic Panel, SOEP). The data clearly supports the finding of a U-shaped evolution. The annual flow of inheritance and gifts was almost 15% of national ...

The Strategic Use of Private Quality Standards in Food Supply Chains

We explore the strategic role of private quality standards in food supply chains. Considering two symmetric retailers that are exclusively supplied by a finite number of producers and endogenizing the suppliers' delivery choice, we show that there exist two asymmetric equilibria in the retailers' quality requirements. Our results reveal that the retailers use private quality standards to improve their ...

Tax Liability-Side Equivalence in Experimental Posted-Offer Markets

In theory, the incidence of a tax should be independent of the side of the market on which it is levied. This principle of liability-side equivalence underlies virtually all theories of tax incidence. Policy discussions, however, tend to place great emphasis on the legal division of tax payments. We use computerized experimental posted-offer markets to test liability-side equivalence. We find that ...

Dynamics and Drivers of Consumption and Multidimensional Poverty: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

This study aims to explore poverty measures, its dynamics and determinants using Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and consumption poverty. Our results show that the two measures assign similar poverty status to about 52 percent of households and that both approaches confirm poverty is mainly transient in rural Ethiopia. However, we find that the trend in adjusted head count poverty is different ...

Merkmale und Einschätzungen der Bewohner von Wohnungsgenossenschaften: eine Charakterisierung auf Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels

Mommies' Girls Get Dresses, Daddies' Boys Get Toys: Gender Preferences in Poland and Their Implications

Wealth Distribution within Couples and Financial Decision Making

While most studies on wealth inequality focus on the inequality between households, this paper examines the distribution of wealth within couples. For this purpose, we make use of unique individual level micro data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). In married and cohabiting couples, men have, on average, 33,000 Euro more net worth than women. We look at five different sets of factors (demographics, ...

Consumption-Savings Decisions under Upward Looking Comparisons: Evidence from Germany, 2002-2011

We demonstrate that interpersonal comparisons lead to "keeping up with the Joneses"-behavior. Using annual household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the causal effect of changes in reference consumption, defined as the consumption level of all households who are perceived to be richer, on household savings and consumption. When controlling for own income, an increase in reference ...

The 1st Berlin IO Day

The Berlin IO Day is a new one-day workshop sponsored by Berlin's leading academic institutions, including DIW Berlin, ESMT, WZB, Humboldt University Berlin, and Technical University Berlin which takes place twice a year, in the Fall and in the Spring. The aim is to create an international forum for high quality research in Industrial Organization in the heart of Berlin, one of Europe's most...