After the global financial crisis, some governments in the EU experienced serious debt financing problems, while others were less affected. This paper seeks to shed light on the divergent fiscal performance by assessing the fiscal conduct in the EU countries before and after the outbreak of the crisis. Fiscal reaction functions of the primary balance are estimated for different groups of EU countries ...
Welfare states redistribute both between individuals reducing annual inequality and over the life-cycle insuring against income risks. But studies measuring redistribution often focus only on a one-year period. Using German SOEP data from 1984 to 2009, long-term inequality over a 20-year period is computed and then decomposed into an inter- and intra-individual component. Results show that annual inequality ...
In this paper we use a dynamic structural life-cycle model to analyze the employment, fiscal and welfare effects induced by unemployment insurance. The model features a detailed specification of the tax and transfer system, including unemployment insurance benefits which depend on an individual's employment and earnings history. The model also captures the endogenous accumulation of experience which ...
Mit beeindruckenden finanzpolitischen Konsolidierungsbemühungen hat es Italien - trotz extrem hoher Defizite zu Beginn der 90er Jahre - geschafft, die Maastricht-Kriterien zu erfüllen und von Beginn an Mitglied des Euroraums zu sein. Skeptiker weisen indes auf weiterhin bestehende finanzpolitische Probleme hin und heben hervor, dass Italien die Vorgaben des Konsolidierungsprogramms seit einiger Zeit ...
We present a method for taking advantage of labour market transitions to identify effects of financial incentives on employment decisions. The framework we use is very flexible and by imposing few theoretical assumptions allows extending the modelled sample relative to struc-tural models. We take advantage of this flexibility to include disabled people in the model and to analyse behaviour of disabled ...