We present an applied general equilibrium modelling approach to analyse employment and unemployment effects of labour tax cuts in an economy where wages are determined through firm-union bargaining at the sectoral level. In such a labour market regime, simulations for Germany show that labour...

We examine whether the sorting of differently achieving students into differently sized classes results in a regressive or compensatory pattern of class sizes for a sample of national school systems. Sorting effects are identified by subtracting the causal effect of class size on performance...

We use the PISA student-level achievement database to estimate international education production functions. Student characteristics, family backgrounds, home inputs, resources, teachers and institutions are all significantly related to math, science and reading achievement. Our models account...

Trade and growth theories predict a mutual causation of innovation and exports. We test empirically whether innovation causes exports using a uniquely rich German micro dataset. Our instrumental-variable strategy identifies variation in innovative activity that is caused by specific impulses and...

Current political discussions in Germany and other European countries illustrate the importance accorded to revenue and distribution effects of tax reforms. Whereas widely recognized concepts of effective tax measures can provide important insights into the incentives of taxation they do not...

In the tax policy debate, differentiation of value-added taxes is often justified by distributional concerns. Our quantitative analysis for Germany indicates that such concerns are misplaced. We find that the abolition of VAT differentiation has only negligible redistributive effects. Instead,...

We analyze the productivity effects of environmental (green) investment as well as of environmental expenditures and energy expenditures. For this purpose, we follow a production function approach where we account for these investment and expenditure categories as inputs. Based on a panel...

From 1 January 2005 onwards the European Union has launched the first large-scale international carbon emissions trading program. As the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) covers only part of domestic carbon emissions, it implies a hybrid environmental regulation scheme: Each EU Member State...

The German corporate tax reform of 2008 has brought about important cuts in corporate tax rates, which were at the same time accompanied by significant changes in the determination of the tax base for both major German corporate taxes - corporate income tax and trade tax. The reform followed the...