We analyze the effects of three alternative proposals to reform the taxation of families relative to the current German system of joint taxation of couples and child allowances: a French-type family splitting and two full family splitting proposals. The empirical analysis of the effects of these...

Since the inception of transition Ukraine experienced an economic decline. Using indicators for the progress of economic reforms in transition countries, it becomes evident that Ukraine belongs to a very small group of eastern European transition countries that implemented very little economic...

In Germany the foreign born population is made up of foreigners and so called ”ethnic Germans” who migrated from eastern European countries to Germany. While the first group is confronted with problems arising from the typical German concept of ethnicity and citizenship, the latter are...

Income is an important determinant of individual standards of living and participation in social life. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel shows that the level of income also affects a person's health and life expectancy. People's self-assessment of their health and health-related quality...

We propose a framework for comparing the relationship between poverty and personal characteristics across countries (or across years), and use it to compare levels and patterns of relative poverty in the USA, Great Britain and Germany during the 1990s. The higher aggregate poverty rates in the...

This paper investigates the determinants of liability maturity choice in transition markets. We formulate a model of firm value maximization that describes managers' choice of optimal debt structure. The theoretical predictions are tested using a unique panel of 4,300 Ukrainian firms during the...

The Orange Revolution unveiled significant political and economic tensions between ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in Ukraine. Whether this divide was caused by purely ethnic differences or by ethnically segregated reform preferences is unknown. Analysis using unique micro data collected prior to...

The paper studies the persistence of profit and its determinants in emerging markets. We apply Markov chain analysis, dynamic panel GMM estimation, and quantile regression techniques to a panel of approximately 3,000 Ukrainian companies. The empirical results show a moderate level of profit...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes the dynamics of equivalent income in Germany in the eighties and nineties. Special emphasis is given to the separation of permanent and transitory components, the persistence of transitory shocks and their implications...

This paper reviews research about the intergenerational transmission of poverty in industrialized countries. In order to make our survey manageable, we restrict attention to studies that consider the relationship between parental poverty (or 'income') during childhood and later-life outcomes; we...