In response to increasing health expenditures and a high number of physician visits, the German government introduced a copayment for ambulatory care in 2004 for individuals with statutory health insurance (SHI). Because persons with private insurance were exempt from the copayments, this health...

In this paper we develop a dynamic structural life-cycle model of labor supply behavior which fully accounts for the effects of income tax and transfers on labor supply incentives. Additionally, the model recognizes the demand side driven rationing risk that might prevent individuals from...

In view of rising wage inequality and increasing poverty, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of the introduction of a nationwide legal minimum wage of € 7.5 per hour on the basis of a...

We analyze the effect of imposed benefit sanctions on the unemployment-to-employment transition of unemployed people entitled to unemployment compensation on the basis of register data from the German Federal Employment Agency. We combine propensity score matching with a discrete-time hazard...

In a carbon constrained world, at least four classes of greenhouse gas mitigation options are available: Energy efficiency, fuel switching, introduction of carbon dioxide capture and storage along with renewable generating technologies, and reductions in emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases....

According to the mainstream view, labour market institutions (LMI) are the key determinants of unemployment in the medium run. The actual empirical explanatory power of measures for labour market institutions, however, has been called into question recently (Baker et al 2005, Baccaro and Rei...

This note shows that the Svensson versus McCallum and Nelson controversy battled in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Loius Review (September/ October 2005) can be mapped into a static version of a New Keynesian macro model that consists of an IS-equation, a Phillips curve and an inflation...

Increasing work incentives for people with low incomes is a common topic in the policy debate across European countries. The Mini-Jobʺ reform in Germany - introduced on April 1, 2003 - can be seen in line with these policies, exempting labour income below a certain threshold from taxes and...

Sick leave payments represent a significant portion of public health expenditures and labor costs. Reductions in replacement levels are a commonly used instrument to tackle moral hazard and to increase the efficiency of the health insurance market. In Germany's Statutory Health Insurance (SHI)...

This paper presents results of simulating a more collusive behavior of a group of natural gas producing and exporting countries, sometimes called GASPEC. We use the World Gas Model, a dynamic, strategic representation of world gas production, trade, and consumption between 2005 and 2030. In...