More than twenty years after the fall of the iron curtain, do citizens from former Communist countries still exhibit attitudes and preferences with regard to the welfare state and income redistribution that differ from those in the West? This paper seeks to answer this question for Germany after...

Whereas the supply of redistribution is relatively easy to measure, the determinants of the demand for redistribution are controversially discussed in international literature. Economic theory typically models redistribution as the result of a voting mechanism; this is only inadequately...

Some of today's most heated policy debates about Brexit, trade wars, climate change abatement, and migration involve redistribution of resources within a given country (national redistribution) and between countries (global redistribution). Nevertheless, theories and evidence on preferences for...

The German "employment miracle", with a weak decline in employment and low unemployment during the great recession, seems to be a good example for a successful labour market reform. Nevertheless, there are concerns about rising inequality in the labour market. In this paper we analyze the...

The German employment miracle, with a weak decline in employment and low unemployment during the great recession, seems to be a good example for a successful labour market reform. Nevertheless, there are concerns about rising inequality in the labour market. In this paper we analyze the quality...

Cognitive skills, such as reading and numeric skills, are key determinants of wages, employment and long-term economic growth. Good cognitive skills also reduce poverty risk and improve non-material wellbeing, such as health and social cohesion. Non-cognitive skills, such as skills to use...

We address the concerns about rising inequality in the German labour market after the implementation of the Hartz reforms between 2003 and 2005. We focus on the quality of new jobs started between 1998 and 2010 in West Germany in terms of job stability and level of earnings. Using social...

Anfang 2004 trat der in der sogenannten Hartz-III-Reform beschlossene Umbau der Vermittlungstätigkeit der öffentlichen Arbeitsverwaltung in Kraft. Ziel war es, die Arbeitslosigkeit durch eine schnellere Jobvermittlung zu senken. Zwar nahm die Arbeitslosigkeit seitdem tatsächlich ab, der Autor...

In this paper, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of economic success in Austria using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions 2011 dataset (EU-SILC 2011). Starting point of the investigation is a two-step estimation procedure, where we detect a significant...

We use linked longitudinal data on employers and employees to estimate how the 2003-2005 Hartz reforms affected the wages of displaced German workers after they returned to work. We also present a simple new method to decompose the wage effects into components attributable to selection on...