Debt-to-GDP ratios have grown to unprecedented levels in many industrialized economies. This requires disciplined consolidation efforts which are, however, supposed to come now at the wrong time with the economic recovery being fragile. The countries forming the G20 need to make sure the...

Germany plays a pioneering role in replacing conventional power plants with renewable energy sources. While this is beneficial with respect to environmental quality, the energy turnaround implies increasing electricity prices for private households and firms. The extent to which this is...

The view is widespread that there are just two options for the future of the Eurozone - either it is complemented by a fiscal union, or it will fall apart. In this paper, we discuss five possible elements of a fiscal union, of which three are in the centre of the current debate on fiscal union...

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social protection systems in Europe and the US to provide (income) insurance against macro level shocks in terms of automatic stabilizers. We find that automatic stabilizers absorb 38% of a proportional income shock and 47% of an idiosyncratic...

In Germany, there is an ongoing debate about how to increase the efficiency of the social security system. The aim of this paper is to simulate different financing systems for Germany with its typical Conservative welfare state regime. For our analysis, we rely on the European static...

Inequality has increased considerably in many Western countries over the past decades. When dealing with economic inequality as a research subject the question "inequality of what among whom" arises. Analyses of inequality are typically concerned with the distribution of wages, earnings or...