We estimate the elasticity of enrollment into higher education with respect to the amount of means tested student aid (BAfoeG) provided by the federal government using the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). Potential student aid is derived on the basis of a detailed tax-benefit microsimulation...

This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Basedon the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometrictechniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfersystem for single women optimal...

In view of rising wage inequality and increasing poverty, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of the introduction of a nationwide legal minimum wage of 7.5 per hour on the basis of a...

'Marginal employment', i.e. employment at low working hours and earnings not covered bysocial security, has been gaining importance in the German economy over the past decade.Using a large newly available panel data set and statistical matching techniques, we analysethe effects of marginal...

We analyze the distribution and concentration of market incomes in Germany in the period1992 to 2001 on the basis of an integrated data set of individual tax returns and the GermanSocio-Economic Panel. The unique feature of this integrated data set is that it encompassesthe whole spectrum of the...

We develop a structural multi-factor labour demand model which distinguishes between eightlabour categories including non-standard types of employment such as marginalemployment. The model is estimated for both the number of workers and total working hoursusing a new panel data set...

This paper contributes to the policy-relevant question whether self-employment is a way outof (long-term) unemployment. We estimate the relationship between the entry rate into selfemploymentand previous (long-term) unemployment on the basis of pseudo-panel data forGermany in the period 1996-2002...