In this paper we explore the potential of a new unemployment insurance benefit at EMU level to improve the income protection available to the unemployed and their families. The benefit is designed to be additional to existing national provision where this falls short in terms of eligibility...

The idea of a common unemployment benefit system for the European Monetary Union (EMU) has provoked increasing interest in both the political and academic spheres because of its potential to smooth fluctuations in income across member states and to strengthen income security for the unemployed....

The aim of this paper is to explore the potential of an EMU unemployment insurance scheme (EMU-UI) to improve the income protection available to individuals and their families in case of unemployment. Our analysis uses an illustrative EMU-UI scheme, which has a common design across member states...

The severe economic crisis affecting Greece is widely expected to have a significant social impact in terms of greater inequality and increased poverty. We provide an early assessment of whether (and to what extent) this is the case. More specifically, we distinguish between two inter-related...

We examine financial literacy in Germany and its relevance for financial well-being. Using data from the Panel on Household Finances collected in 2021, we show that about 62% of German households answer the Big Three financial literacy questions correctly. Those with lower education, who are out...

Even though interest in non take up of social benefits is considerable in many European countries, the topic is under-researched in southern Europe. The paper provides preliminary estimates of the extent of non take up of two pairs of means-tested retirement benefits in Greece and Spain. The...

Fiscal welfare, i.e. the use of the tax system to achieve social policy goals, is assuming ever greater importance throughout Europe and beyond. In housing, the favourable tax treatment of mortgage interest repayments has often coexisted alongside public programmes of housing benefit or social...

Since 2002 the German government seeks to stimulate private retirement savings by means of special allowances and tax exemptions - the so-called Riester scheme. We apply matching and panel regression techniques to assess the impact of the Riester scheme on households' propensities to save in a...

We empirically investigate the distributional consequences of the Riester scheme, the main private pension subsidization program in Germany. We find that 38% of the aggregate subsidy accrues to the top two deciles of the population, but only 7.3% to the bottom two. Nonetheless the Riester scheme...

We analyze empirically the optimal design of social insurance and assistance programs when families obtain insurance by making labor supply choices for both spouses. For this purpose, we specify a structural life-cycle model of the labor supply and savings decisions of singles and married...