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...

We elicit concern for animal welfare in an incentivized, direct and real setup that allows us to separate genuine interest in animal welfare from confounding factors like advertisement, replacement arguments or image concerns. Subjects choose between intensive farming and organic living...

Using German income distribution in 2009, this paper studies the redistributive and revenue effects of bracket creep under various inflation scenarios. We develop a tax micro-simulation model for the newly available Panel on Household Finance (PHF) data. The simulation yields an inverted...

We look at the effect of capital rules on a banking system that is connected through correlated credit exposures and interbank lending. The rules, which combine individual bank characteristics and interconnectivity measures of interbank lending, are to minimize a measure of system-wide losses....

In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's belief about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. A growing number of surveys and experiments ask participants to state beliefs explicitly but little is known about the causal relation between beliefs and...

Obtaining indicators on innovation activities of firms has been a challenge in economic research for a long time. The most frequently used indicators - R&D expenditure and patents - provide an incomplete picture as they represent inputs and throughputs in the innovation process. Output...

Weitzman (2014) proposed that focusing international climate negotiations on a uniform carbon price is more effective than Paris style negotiations in achieving ambitious climate action. We put this hypothesis to an experimental test by simulating international negotiations on climate change in...

In seiner Thünen-Vorlesung vor dem Verein für Socialpolitik im Herbst 2020 hat Klaus Schmidt das Design von Klimaschutzverhandlungen untersucht. Er geht dabei von einem Vorschlag Martin Weitzmans aus, künftige Verhandlungen auf einen einheitlichen CO2-Mindestpreis zu fokussieren. Wäre ein...

In this study we estimate the Brazilian consumer demand system through family expenditure data, which cover all consumption categories. The model is estimated from family-level expenditures on seven consumption categories, and a new set of regional cost-of-living indexes. The sources for...

Web-based innovation indicators may provide new insights into firm-level innovation activities. However, little is known yet about the accuracy and relevance of web-based information. In this study, we use 4,485 German firms from the Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) 2019 to analyze which website...