Publications of the Research Group Inequality and Public Policy

  1. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-003 // 2016

    Do Higher Corporate Taxes Reduce Wages? Micro Evidence from Germany

    This paper estimates the incidence of corporate taxes on wages using a 20-year panel of German municipalities. Administrative linked employer-employee data allows estimating heterogeneous worker and firrm…

  2. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Do Savings Increase in Response to Salient Information about Retirement and Expected Pensions?

    How can retirement savings be increased? We explore a unique policy change in the context of the German pension system to study this question. As of 2004, the German pension authority started to send out annual…

  3. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Trends in the German Income Distribution: 2005/06 to 2010/11

    We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the…

  4. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    An Unemployment Insurance Scheme for the Euro Area? A Comparison of Different Alternatives using Micro Data

    We analyze different alternatives how a common unemployment insurance system for the euro area (EA) could be designed and assess their effectiveness to act as an insurance device in the presence of asymmetric…

  5. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

    Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers…

  6. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Trends in the German Income Distribution: 2005/06 to 2010/11

    We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the…

  7. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-088 // 2016

    Trends in the German Income Distribution: 2005/06 to 2010/11

    We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the…

  8. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 16-086 // 2016

    Jobs, Crime, and Votes – A Short-run Evaluation of the Refugee Crisis in Germany

    Millions of refugees made their way to Europe between 2014 and 2015, with over one million arriving in Germany alone. Yet, little is known about the impact of this inflow on labor markets, crime, and voting…