We study the distributional consequences of housing price, bond price and equity price increases for Euro Area households using data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). The capital gains from bond price and equity price increases turn out to be concentrated among relatively...

Budget-neutral tax wedge reductions rank high in the policy agenda of several EMU member states. Using a New Keynesian DSGE model of a monetary union with a complex labour market structure and a comprehensive public sector, we evaluate the macroeconomic and welfare effects of reducing the firms'...

We develop a theoretical model with labor market frictions, incomplete financial markets and with households which have two members. Households face unemployment risks but their members adjust their labor supplies to insure against unemployment. We use the model to explain the cyclical...

We document that the added worker effect (AWE) has increased over the last three decades. We develop a search model with two earner households and we illustrate that the increase in the AWE from the 1980s to the 2000s can be explained through i) the narrowing of the gender pay gap, ii) changes...

We characterize optimal monetary policy in a New Keynesian search-and-matching model where multiple-worker firms satisfy demand in the short run by adjusting hours per worker. Imperfect product market competition and search frictions reduce steady state hours per worker below the efficient...

We draw on two decades of historical data to analyze how regional labor markets in West Germany adjusted to one of the largest forced population movements in history, the mass inflow of eight million German expellees after World War II. The expellee inflow was distributed very asymmetrically...

Inflation expectations are often found to depend on socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of households, such as age, income and education, however, the reasons for this systematic heterogeneity are not yet fully understood. Since accounting for these expectation differentials could help...

Mit dem Erwerbspersonenpotenzial zu Vollzeitäuivalenten wird ein Messkonzept für das gesamtwirtschaftliche Arbeitsangebot auf Stundenbasis vorgeschlagen. Es dient zur Berechnung des Faktors Arbeit in angebotsseitigen Schätzungen des Produktionspotenzials in der mittleren Frist. Besondere...

Advocates of apprenticeship programs often argue as if it is simply a matter of historical accident which has hindered such investment by U.S. firms. This paper explores the structure of incentives undergirding the German system of apprenticeship training. First, we describe three...