German municipalities are expected to suffer from (often significant) population losses in the upcoming decades. We assess these local governments’ vulnerability to the fiscal consequences of this demographic decline through two means (using a sample of 1021 municipalities in the state of...

Using a Mincer-type wage function, we estimate cohort effects in the returns to education for West German workers born between 1925 and 1974. The main problem to be tackled in the specification is to separately identify cohort, experience, and possibly also age effects in the returns. For women,...

Wir analysieren die Entwicklung der Bildungsrenditen in Westdeutschland in der Periode von 1984 bis 1997 auf der Basis der Humankapitaltheorie mit Daten des Sozio-Ökonomischen Panels. Die Schätzergebnisse zeigen, dass Frauen mit etwa 10% eine signifikant höhere durchschnittliche...

Assar Lindbeck has pointed to the problem that generous welfare state institutions may in the long-run undermine those social norms which limit the costs and incentives effects of the welfare state and thus guarantee its viability. This study is the first to assess the empirical validity of...

In diesem Beitrag wird auf der Basis von Paneldaten für die westdeutschen Bundesländer untersucht, ob und in welchem Maße der demographische Wandel sowie die unterschiedlichen politischen Parteienkonstellationen die Hochschulausgaben auf Länderebene beeinflussen. Wir finden empirische...

This study analyzes the sensitivity of US giving to both business cycle fluctuations and trend growth. With tax revenues as a point of reference, US giving constitutes a relatively stable source of revenue. Total giving is characterized by a business cycle volatility which is comparable to the...

Fiscal rules have become popular to limit deficits and high debt burdens in industrialized countries. A growing literature examines their impact based on aggregate fiscal performance. So far, no evidence exists on how fiscal rules influence deficit expectations of fiscal policy makers. In the...

This paper follows up recent work on the relationship between (un-)employment and wage effects of social security financing undertaken by the OECD Jobs Study. Based on a simple macroeconometric model of the labour market, I investigate whether the peculiar OECD results for Germany on the...

Germany, as most other European countries, has been plagued by a persistently high level of long-term unemployment since the early 1980's. In contrast, long-term unemployment is much less of a problem in the United States. One potential reason for the different structure of unemployment relates...