Publications of the Research Group Inequality and Public Policy

  1. Refereed Journal // 2024

    The impact of Communist Party membership on wealth distribution and accumulation in urban China

    This paper provides the first in-depth investigation into the evolution of the wealth gap between CCP and non-CCP households in urban China from 1995 to 2017. We apply unconditional quantile regression to…

  2. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 24-052 // 2024

    Early Life Conditions, Time Preferences, and Savings

    This study examines how early-life exposure to food scarcity influences individuals’ long-term time preferences and savings behavior. To this end, we analyze hand-collected historical data on livestock…

  3. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 24-027 // 2024

    Are We Yet Sick of New Technologies? The Unequal Health Effects of Digitalization

    This study quantifies the relationship between workplace digitalization, i.e., the increasing use of frontier technologies, and workers’ health outcomes using novel and representative German linked…

  4. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 24-029 // 2024

    Staggered Contracts and Unemployment During Recessions

    This paper studies the impact of downward wage rigidity on wage and employment dynamics after the outbreak of major recessions in Spain. Downward wage rigidity stems from collective agreements, which set…

  5. Refereed Journal // 2024

    Government consumption in the DINA framework: allocation methods and consequences for post-tax income inequality

    About half of government expenditure in the United States takes the form of government consumption (e.g., education, defense, infrastructure). In many studies of post-tax inequality based on the DINA framework…

  6. Refereed Journal // 2024

    Eating Habits, Food Consumption, and Health: The Role of Early Life Experiences

    This study explores the long-run effects of a temporary scarcity of a consumption good on preferences towards that good once the shock is over. Specifically, we focus on individuals who were children during…

  7. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 24-021 // 2024

    Minimum Wages and Insurance within the Firm

    Minimum wages generate an asymmetric pass-through of firm shocks across workers. We establish this result leveraging employer-employee data on Italian metal manufacturing firms, which face different wage floors…