The global imbalances of the 2000s and the recent global financial crisis are intimately connected. Both originate in the combination of economic policies adopted by the two key economies, the US and China. Global financial markets served as a transmission belt, both during the boom as during...

German history over the past 125 years has been turbulent. Marked by two world wars, revolutions and major regime changes, as well as a hyperinflation and three currency reforms, expropriations and territorial divisions, it comprises extreme shocks to study the role of historical events,...

Global liquidity expansion has been very dynamic since 2001. Contrary to conventional wisdom, high money growth rates have not coincided with a concurrent rise in goods prices. At the same time, however, asset prices have increased sharply, significantly outpacing the subdued development in...

The idea of higher wealth taxes to finance the mounting public debt in the wake of the financial crises is gaining ground in several OECD countries. We evaluate the revenue and distributional effects of a one-time capital levy on personal net wealth that is currently on the German political...

Using a micro-level approach to poverty traps, this paper explores welfare dynamics among households in post-war rural Mozambique. Conceptually, the paper builds on an asset-based approach to poverty and tests empirically, with household panel data, for the existence of a poverty trap. Findings...

Jobs offer different wages and different non-monetary working conditions. This paper investigates how the demand for non-monetary aspects evolves over changing wealth levels. Wages do not perfectly compensate individuals for differential utility of jobs in a labour market with informational...

Motivated by the lack of literature linking actual to perceived relative deprivation, this paper assesses the role of visibility in the deprivation of goods and assets vis-à-vis income behind perceptions of relative deprivation. We rely on household survey data that includes unique information...

This paper investigates the relationship between wealth, ageing and saving behaviour of private households by using pooled cross sections of German consumption survey data. Different components of wealth are distinguished, as their impact on the savings rate is not homogeneous. On average, the...

The Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) provides information about household wealth (real and financial assets as well as liabilities) from 15 Euro-countries after the financial crisis of 2007/8. The survey will be the central dataset in this topic in the future. However, several...

I construct a new dataset with financial and housing wealth in 16 countries and investigate the effect of wealth on consumption. The baseline estimation method based on the sluggishness of consumption growth implies that the long-run marginal propensity to consume out of total wealth averaged...