With respect to the labor market participation of the elderly in welfare states, the economic literature focuses on the incentives to the worker in the light of generous early retirement opportunities. The sociological literature on the other hand addresses the problem of low productivity of...

This contribution is motivated by two stylized observations, the slowdown in growth, and a simultaneous income polarization in many advanced economies. While mainstream neoclassical and endogenous growth theory cannot sufficiently explain the nexus, we argue that the demand side plays a role. We...

Our very simple two agent New Keynesian model is highly stylised. It consists of an entrepreneur, who owns the economies' firms, consumes and saves, but does not work (or does not receive wage income), while the worker consumes and works, but cannot save. The allocation of the ability to save...

This paper documents the magnitude, pattern, and evolution of lifetime earnings inequality in Germany. Based on a large sample of earning biographies from social security records, we show that the intra-generational distribution of lifetime earnings of male workers has a Gini coefficient around...

The functional income distribution in the US and most OECD countries has been characterized by an increasing capital income share and a declining wage share over the last decades. We present new evidence for the US economy that this fact is not only explained by technical change and...

We analyse the link between income distribution and the current account for the period 1972-2007. We find that rising (top-end) personal inequality leads to a decrease of the current account, ceteris paribus. This result is consistent with consumption externalities resulting from upward-looking...

We develop a three-country, stock-fl ow consistent macroeconomic model to study the e ffects of changes in both personal and functional income distribution on national current account balances. Each country has a household sector and a non-household (corporate) sector. The household sector is...

In a sequential auction of perfect substitutes, we analyze the consequences of the seller's incapacity to commit perfectly to a reserve-price schedule. When facing such a seller, the bidders have strong incentives not to reveal during the earlier rounds of the auction any information about their...

Previous research shows that firms may offer excessively high (and shrouded) add-on prices in competitive markets when some consumers are myopic. We analyze the effects of regulatory intervention via educating myopic consumers on equilibrium strategies of firms, consumer protection and welfare....

A frequent feature of information structures is that they generate signals which are not mutually independent, but rather rely on a common set of underlying information. Using a simple experimental design, we show that in such contexts many people neglect correlations in the updating process,...