Die Finanzhilfen der Bundesländer und ihrer Gemeinden sind beträchtlich. Für das Jahr 2001 wurde ein Betrag von insgesamt 70,6 Mrd. Euro ermittelt. Er entspricht mehr als der Hälfte des gesamten Lohnsteueraufkommens, das freilich um das Kindergeld reduziert ist, oder 3,4 Prozent des...

Using rich linked employer-employee data for (West) Germany between 1996 and 2014, we conduct a decomposition analysis based on recentered influence function (RIF) regressions to analyze the relative contributions of various plant and worker characteristics to the rise in German wage dispersion....

In recent years, a lot of rules concerning government expenditures as well as tax revenues were changed in Germany. Government expenditures in relation to GDP were reduced, income tax rates were lowered and the budget deficit declined. The structure of government expenditures changed in favor of...

In recent years, a lot of rules concerning government expenditures as well as tax revenues were changed in Germany. Government expenditures in relation to GDP were reduced, income tax rates were lowered and the budget deficit declined. The structure of government expenditures changed in favor of...

In many countries, fiscal policy became strongly expansionary in order to fight the recession. Structural budget deficits increased sharply and might remain high after the end of the recession. This would raise real interest rates and would impair economic growth. Some measures to reduce the...

Does immigration accelerate sectoral change towards high-productivity sectors? This paper uses the mass displacement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe to West Germany after World War II as a natural experiment to study this question. A simple two-sector model of the economy, in which moving...

Between 1995 and 2005, the German economy has experienced a phase of weak economic growth. We analyze whether this weak growth performance can be attributed to the stance of monetary conditions during that period. We show that the real effective exchange rate did have almost no dampening effects...

This paper discusses the goal conflict between social protection and economic growth as well as employment. Taking the German economy as an example for the large continental economies of Old Europe, it analyzes twenty mechanisms that affect the fundamentals of the economy negatively and imply...