This study uses scenario calculations to estimate the economic costs of the partial closure of the economy due to the coronavirus epidemic. With a shutdown duration of two months, the costs reach between EUR 255 billion and EUR 495 billion, depending on the scenario, and reduce the annual growth...

This paper presents scenarios of the shutdown costs in terms of lost value added for Austria, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and UK. The shutdown phase will lead to considerable production losses and large declines in GDP this year. Lasting longer than a month, the losses within the...

This note presents the results of two ad-hoc questions on the impact of the corona-crisis, which were included in the April-wave of the European Commission's Joint Harmonised EU Programme of Business Surveys. The questions were asked to German, Spanish and Austrian firms in the industry,...

In this paper we analyze exemplarily the volatility of the internal rates of return of the German pension system over the life-cycle of an individual born in 1957. The outcome is compared to an alternative defined-contribution or defined-benefit policy. Based on the actual data, our results show...

Presuming an ageing population, every introduction of a pay-as-you-go scheme causes intergenerational redistribution in favor of the first generations and to the burden of young and future generations. Using the concept of internal rates of return we want to examine the extent to which the first...

During the next decades the populations of most developed countries will grow older as a result of the low level of birth rates since the 1970s and/or the continuously increasing life expectancy. We show within a Generational Accounting framework how unsustainable the public finances of France,...

This article surveys the literature on selection effects in retirement behavior. More specifically, we consider early retirement schemes with actuarially fair adjustments based on average life expectancy. To this end, we recapitulate the theoretical literature on selection effects and resulting...