Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions – the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

Applied econometrics has recently emphasized the identification of causal parameters for policy analysis. This revolution has yet to fully propagate to the field of regional science. We examine the scope for application of the matching approach – part of the modern applied econometrics toolkit...

The reliability of general self-rated health status is examined using the reform of the public health insurance system of Germany in 2004 as a source of exogenous variation. Among others, the reform introduced a co-payment for ambulatory doctor visits and increased the co-payments for...

Against the background of the current discussion on the introduction of statutory minimum wages in Germany, this paper analyzes the potential employment and fiscal effects of such a policy. Based on estimated labor demand elasticities obtained from a structural labor demand model, the empirical...

Within the context of the current political discussion over base realignments and closures (BRACs) in Germany, this study provides policy guidance by examining the economic consequences to the surrounding community. We identify the causal effect of a reduction in military personnel on a number...

Over the last years, public smoking bans have been introduced in most European countries. Unlike elsewhere, in Germany such bans were introduced at state level at different points in time, which provides important intra-country regional variation that can be exploited to identify the effects of...

In Germany we observe a decline in regular employment and an increase in atypical forms of employment. Especially marginal part-time employment which is characterized by lower tax rates and lower social security contributions increased substantially after a reform in 2003 made this type of...

This paper assesses the dynamics of treatment effects arising from variation in the duration of training. We use German administrative data that have the extraordinary feature that the amount of treatment varies continuously from 10 days to 395 days (i.e. 13 months).This feature allows us to...

Recent oil price shocks have relatively small effects on real economic activity and inflation compared to the experiences of the seventies and the early eighties. In this paper we analyse possible reasons for these phenomena using the example of the German economy. At first, by estimating a...

This paper evaluates the R&D enhancing effects of two large public grant schemes for the German biotechnology industry (BioRegio, BioProfi le). Both grant schemes are organized in the form of contents for cooperation with the goal to foster the performance of innovative firms by their...