We estimate the impact of effective profit taxation on the financial leverage of corporations on the basis of a pseudo-panel constructed from corporate tax return micro data for the period 1998-2001, a period which saw the introduction of a major corporate tax reform in Germany. The financial...

We estimate the elasticity of corporate taxable income with respect to the effective corporate tax rate on the basis of a pseudo-panel constructed from corporate tax return micro data for the period 1998-2001, a period which saw the introduction of a major corporate tax reform in Germany....

We calculate the expected incidence of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) using industry and household-level data. By combining data on direct CO2 emissions by production sector from the German Environmental Account with the German Input-Output Accounts, we calculate the CO2...

This paper investigates whether self-employed households use consumer loans - in particular installment loans and overdrafts - to finance business activities. Controlling for financial and non-financial household variables we show that self-employed households particularly use personal...

In developing and transition economies, microlending has become an effective instrument for providing micro businesses with the necessary financial resources to launch operations. In the industrialized countries, with their highly developed banking systems, however, there has been ongoing debate...

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...

We analyze the taxation of top personal incomes in Germany on the basis of an integrated data file of individual tax returns and a general household survey for the years 1992-2002. The unique feature of this integrated data set is that it includes all taxpayers in the top percentile of the gross...

When unemployed persons go into business, they often are characterized as necessity entrepreneurs, because push factors, namely their unemployment, likely prompted their decision. In contrast to this, business founders who have been previously employed represent opportunity entrepreneurs because...

We analyze the link between R&D, innovation, and productivity in MSMEs with a special focus on micro firms with fewer than 10 employees; usually constituting the majority of firms in industrialized economies. Using the German KfW SME panel, we examine to what extent micro firms are different...

The idea of higher wealth taxes to finance the mounting public debt in the wake of the financial crises is gaining ground in several OECD countries. We evaluate the revenue and distributional effects of a one-time capital levy on personal net wealth that is currently on the German political...