We ask whether a PAYG-financed social security system is welfare improving in an economy with idiosyncratic and aggregate risk. We argue that interactions between the two risks are important for this question. One is a direct interaction in the form of a countercyclical variance of idiosyncratic...

We ask whether a PAYG-financed social security system is welfare improving in an economy with idiosyncratic and aggregate risk. We argue that interactions between the two risks are important for this question. One is a direct interaction in the form of a countercyclical variance of idiosyncratic...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed significant gaps in the coverage, comprehensiveness and adequacy of social protection systems worldwide. These gaps have jeopardized the health, incomes and jobs of billions of people. Closing these protection gaps, facilitating faster and inclusive...

We present new empirical evidence on the distribution of earnings, income and wealth among entrepreneurs in Germany. We document that both earnings and income are more concentrated among entrepreneurs than among workers and describe a large-scale overlapping-generations model that can replicate...

The present paper studies the role of social security in an economy populated by overlapping generations of individuals that have time-consistent or time-inconsistent preferences, face mortality and individual income risk, borrowing constraints as well as progressive income taxes. Our...

We performed a cross-sectional, "bottom-up" observational study of resource consumption and quality of life of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) in the United Kingdom. Three centers participated in the study. Patients received a questionnaire either by mail or during a clinic visit, and a...

We performed a cross-sectional, "bottom-up" observational study of resource consumption and quality of life of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) in Germany. Six centers participated in the study. Patients were asked to complete a questionnaire, and a total of 737 patients returned the...

Exploiting official historical records of the German Bundestag and Bundesrat, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the German statutory pension insurance scheme, we construct a narrative of legislated social security changes for Germany between 1970 and 2013 in order to identify...

We provide new evidence of forward-looking labor supply responses to changes in pension wealth. We exploit a 2014 German reform that increased pension wealth for mothers by an average of 4.4% per child born before January 1, 1992. Using administrative data on the universe of working histories,...