In a model with endogenous fertility and labor supply three instruments of family policies are analyzed: child benefits, subsidies for external child care, and parental leave payments. We compare the impact on the quantity and quality of children, the secondary earner's labor supply and welfare....

This paper describes FiFoSiM, the integrated tax benefit microsimulation and CGE model of the Center of Public Economics at the University of Cologne. FiFoSiM consists of three main parts. The first part is a static tax benefit microsimulation module. The second part adds a behavioural component...

This documentation describes FiFoSiM, the integrated tax benefit microsimulation and CGE model of the Center of Public Economics at the University of Cologne. FiFoSiM consists of three main parts. The first part is a static tax benefit microsimulation module. The second part adds a behavioural...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of the tax and transfer systems in the European Union and the US to act as an automatic stabilizer in the current economic crisis. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38 per cent of a proportional income shock in the EU, compared to 32 per cent in the...

This paper investigates the inter-temporal structure of implicit taxes that arise in unfunded pension schemes. We demonstrate that these tax rates are declining over the life cycle. Using German micro-data for men and married women we estimate periodic wage elasticities of labour supply in order...

In this paper we study the effects on the survival rate in employment of a scheme that facilitates gradual retirement through working time reductions. We use information on the entire labour market career and other observables to control for selection and take dynamic treatment assignment into...

Several recent studies show that the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) is not a sufficient statistic for the welfare costs of taxation due to factors such as taxbase shifting. This paper provides an additional argument demonstrating the non-sufficiency of the ETI, namely tax deductions....

If there is a means tested basic income for old age, households will tend to reduce precautionary savings to an inefficiently low level. This might serve as a justification for a public pension system. In a representative agent framework, indeed, the introduction of a compulsory pension s ystem...

The flat income tax has become increasingly popular recently, yet its implementation is limited to Eastern Europe. We analyse the distributional and efficiency effects of flat tax scenarios for Western European countries. Our simulations show that flat tax rates required to attain revenue...

Whether observed differences in redistributive policies across countries are the result of differences in social preferences or efficiency constraints is an important question that paves the debate about the optimality of welfare regimes. To shed new light on this question, we estimate labor...