Governments all over the world have invested tens of billions of dollars in car scrappage programs to fuel the economy in 2009. We investigate the German case using a unique micro transaction dataset covering the years 2007 to 2010. Our focus is on the incidence of the subsidy, i.e., we ask how...

According to the German SAVE survey, more than 40 percent of households regularly save fixed amounts rather than flexibly adjusting savings to income variations as assumed by the Permanent Income Hypothesis (PIH). Fixed amount saving behaviour could thus imply a challenge to PIH-based standard...

This paper uses household level data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) over the period 1991 to 2008 to analyse the driving factors of movements in the German household savings rate. Specifically, it analyses the impact of the precautionary savings motive and the impact of the 2002...

This paper uses the special occupational status of German civil servants in combination with the unforeseen event of German reunification to study empirically the relationship between job security and fertility. The civil servant-status provides extreme job security as well as good possibilities...

Behavioral economists have argued that incentives can backfire. In a field experiment, we distribute “no junk mail” stickers to more than 800 households. We introduce information, monitoring, and rewards in treatments. We do not find evidence of motivation crowding out.

We provide an overview of research on the stock trading behavior of individual investors. This research documents that individual investors (1) underperform standard benchmarks (e.g. a low-cost index fund), (2) sell winning investments while holding losing investments (the “disposition...

In den letzten Monaten wurde Deutschland mit einem Preisschock für Kraftstoffe konfrontiert. Nach Jahren geringer Zapfsäulenpreise kam es zu sprunghaften Verteuerungen. Um die Auswirkungen des Preisschocks auf die Mobilität in Nordrhein-Westfalen zu erfassen, werden in diesem Bericht...

This paper estimates a demand function for orchestras in Germany and in the process provides estimates of the impact of various determinants of demand for live orchestral music. Price and income are shown to be highly significant as are the quality factors included. The price elasticity is...