Most of the available comparative empirical evidence on levels and trends in income inequalities and poverty in OECD countries relies on the concept of household disposable cash income, thus ignoring the services governments provide to households. Including those services matters a lot, however,...

The aim of this paper is to estimate non-monetary income advantages arising from publicly provided education and to analyze their impact on the income distribution and on economic inequality in Germany. Using representative micro-data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and taking into...

The idea governing the transition to a market economy in East Germany-in contrast to other Eastern European countries-was that of using socio-political measures to raise East German living conditions to the higher West German standards. And indeed, the rising living standard and subjective...