This study analyzes the causal effect of an increase in the retirement age on health. We exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform for women using two complementary empirical approaches - a Regression Discontinuity Design and a Difference-in- Differences approach. The analysis is based on...

We analyze the impact of changing employment patterns and pension reforms on the future level of public pensions across birth cohorts in Germany. The analysis is based on a rich dataset that combines household survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and process-produced...

The employment behavior of mothers is strongly influenced by labor market regulations and certain institutional arrangements, which both vary greatly across European countries. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) 1994-2001 for Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, which...

This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Based on the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometric techniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfer system for single women...

In this paper we develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between the two outcomes. We identify the effect of financial incentives on the employment and fertility decision by exploiting variation in the tax and transfer...

We analyze the work incentives and labor supply effects of the so-called mini- jobs reform (subsidies of social security contributions to people with low-earnings jobs) introduced in Germany in April 2003. The analysis is based on a structural labor supply model embedded in a detailed...

We estimate the elasticity of enrollment into higher education with respect to the amount of means tested student aid (BAfoeG) provided by the federal government using the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). Potential student aid is derived on the basis of a detailed taxbenefit microsimulation...

We analyze potential labor supply effects of a shift from the current German system of joint taxation of married couples to a system of limited real income splitting on the basis of an econometric household labor supply model embedded in a tax-benefit model. Our simulation results show...

In the year 2000, the German government passed the most ambitious tax reform in postwar German history aiming at a significant tax relief for households. Drawing on data of the GSOEP, we analyze the distributional and fiscal effects of the tax reform. Our analysis employs microsimulation...