In January 2015, Germany introduced a federal, statutory minimum wage of 8.50 € per hour. This study evaluates the effects of this policy on regular and marginal employment and on welfare dependency. Based on county-level administrative data, this study uses the difference-in-differences...

Our paper deals with the welfare and employment effects of green tax reforms. In the first part we develop a flexible, interactive simulation model which is accessible under http://brw.zew.de. Users can specify their own green tax reforms or emission quotas and quantify welfare and employment...

While there is some hope that the ongoing climate change negotiations will soon come up with concrete, time scheduled and binding emission reduction commitments, the question of how to achieve these targets is still unsolved. The objective of this paper is to analyse alternative settings of an...

We study three budget-neutral reforms of the German tax and transfer system designed to improve work incentives for people with low incomes: a feasible flat tax reform that provides a basic income which is equal to the current level of the means tested unemployment benefit, and two alternative...