Showing 1 - 10 of 420
Whole life insurance plays an important role in household saving. However, empirical evidence on its determinants is scarce. This paper studies two natural experiments to identify the effects of tax incentives and bequest motives on life-insurance demand. An unanticipated tax reform in 2000...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003966524
This paper investigates the influence of the political regime on the relative importance of conspicuous consumption. We use the separation of Germany into the communist GDR and the democratic FRG and its reunification in 1990 as a natural experiment. Relying on household data that are...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009621765
Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers within Socialist East Germany during the 1980s and accounting for potential endogeneity,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011521867
There is no consensus about the causes of the reduction in business cycle volatility seen in many major economies over the last decade. Using stylised models of the economies of the US, Euro area, UK and Japan, we argue that economic stability has been fostered by improved monetary policy and by...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10002521030
This paper proposes a growth-oriented dual-income tax by combining an allowance for corporate equity with a broadly defined flat tax on personal capital income. Revenue losses are compensated by an increase in the value added tax. The paper demonstrates the neutrality properties of the reform...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003113308
The paper examines the sustainability of U.S. fiscal policy, finding substantial evidence in favor. I summarize the U.S. fiscal record from 1792-2003, critically review sustainability conditions and their testable implications, and apply them to U.S. data. I particularly emphasize the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10002756349
In this paper, we document the fact that countries that have experienced occasional financial crises have, on average, grown faster than countries with stable financial conditions. We measure the incidence of crisis with the skewness of credit growth, and find that it has a robust negative...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10002757563
The euro area experienced a slowdown in output and Total Factor Productivity growth in the 1990s compared to the 1980s. We ask the following questions. Is the apparent slowdown in euro area output due to a lack of proper accounting for capital quality improvement? The answer is no. Did...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10002757608
We argue that with interdependent utility functions growth can lead to a decline in total welfare of a society if the gains from growth are sufficiently unequally distributed in the presence of negative externalities, i.e., envy.
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10002856378
The idea that certain economic variables are roughly constant in the long-run is an old one. Kaldor described them as stylized facts, whereas Klein and Kosobud labelled them great ratios. While such ratios are widely adopted in theoretical models in economics as conditions for balanced growth,...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013041372