In Germany we observe a decline in regular employment and an increase in atypical forms of employment. Especially marginal part-time employment which is characterized by lower tax rates and lower social security contributions increased substantially after a reform in 2003 made this type of...

The second and third generation of immigrants have been the centre of a lively debate about the economic integration of immigrants into their host societies, but there is little empirical evidence on the German case. In this study I comprehensively portray the labour market outcomes of second...

In contrast to West-Germany, illicit drugs were virtually absent in East-Germany until 1990. Yet, after the collapse of the former GDR, East-Germany was expected to encounter a sharp increase in the prevalence of substance abuse. By analyzing individual data, we find that East-Germany largely...

It is well known that smoking causes severe adverse health effects, and it seems evident that governments are justified or even obliged to implement measures of tobacco control to mitigate these effects. Yet, as this paper argues with a distinct focus on Germany, the three most important and...

Studies on the effect of ageing on health care expenditures (HCE) have revealed the importance of controlling for time-to-death (TTD). These studies, however, are subject to possible endogeneity if HCE influences remaining life expectancy. This paper introduces a ten year observational period on...

Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new...

Against the background of the current discussion on the introduction of statutory minimum wages in Germany, this paper analyzes the potential employment and fiscal effects of such a policy. Based on estimated labor demand elasticities obtained from a structural labor demand model, the empirical...

In this paper we argue that future inflation in an economy depends on the way people perceive current inflation, their inflation sentiment. We construct some simple measures of inflation sentiment which capture whether price acceleration is shared by many components of the CPI basket. In a...

We analyse the nature of German trade-FDI linkages within the EU27 based on a simultaneous equation gravity approach for imports, exports, in- and outward FDI stocks. We adopt both a Hausman-Taylor (1981) IV approach (3SLS-GMM) and rival non-IV estimation (the system extension to the Fixed...

This paper analyses the monetary policy interdependence between the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Federal Reserve (Fed) for the period 1999-2006. Two models are specified: a partial Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) and a general VECM. In the partial VECM, we look for a long-run...