Drawing on data from the twenty year long German Socioeconomic Panel Study, we show that partisanship is bounded. Almost every West German, East German, and immigrant never supports one or both of the major parties and most people vary support for their party by claiming no partisan preference....

The recession the United States economy entered in December of 2007 is considered to be the most severe downturn the country has experienced since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate reached as high as 10.1 percent in October 2009 - the highest we have seen since the 1982 recession. In...

Despite the relatively extensive research on pay levels and the consequences of income disparities, little is known about which reference groups people choose for comparative evaluation of personal income and why different selection patterns emerge. The aim of this paper is to dig deeper for...

This paper explores whether more generous social spending polices in fact lead to less income inequality, or if redistributive outcomes are offset by behavioral disincentive effects. To account for the inherent endogeneity of social policies with regard to inequality levels, I apply the System...