The Riester pension has been a constant topic of discussion since being introduced in 2002. For a scientific analysis of acceptance and incentives, a valid database is required. The German SAVE-study dataset underlying this study provides the possibility to represent the sample of those...

The German Child Benefit ("Kindergeld") is paid to legal guardians of children as a cash benefit. This study employs exogenous variations in the amount of child benefit received by households to investigate the extent to which these various changes have translated into an improvement in the...

Since 2002 the German government has promoted private retirement saving plans by means of special subsidies and tax incentives: the Riester scheme. This policy mainly targets low-income households. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel, we scrutinize the impact of the Riester scheme on...

In 2002, the German government tried to increase private old-age provisions by introducing incentives such as supplementary subsidies and tax credits. Since then, the so-called “Riester pension” has grown in popularity. Apart from subsidized pension plans, unsubsidized private pension...

The German Child Benefit ("Kindergeld") is paid to legal guardians of children as a cash benefit. This study employs exogenous variations in the amount of child benefit received by households to investigate the extent to which these various changes have translated into an improvement in the...

The Riester pension is much better than its reputation. Only some of the criticism is actually problematic. In part the legislature has already addressed or is going to address some of the existent issues. Behind the argument that the return was no better than a piggy bank is a miscalculation:...

Analyses based on data from the Zulagenstelle für Altersvermögen (ZfA) show a high proportion of low wage earners among Riester-Rente savers. This result cannot be generalized to the population because the data include only Riester-Rente savers. However, analyses based on the Socio-Economic...

In this paper, I draw on the insights of behavioral economics to explain the rise of consumer debt and analyze the potential of several emerging European consumer debt relief systems in preventing excessive consumer borrowing. First, I submit that behavioral economics offers compelling...

This paper calculates monthly time series for the overall safety net's statutory marginal labor income tax rate as a function of skill and marital status. Marginal tax rates increased significantly for all groups between 2007 and 2009, and dramatically so for unmarried household heads. The...

This paper investigates labor supply and redistributive effects of in-work benefits for Italian married couples using a tax-benefit microsimulation model and a multi-sectoral discrete choice model of labor supply. We consider in-work benefits based on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the...