OPTIMThe conservative central banker has come under attack recently. Explicitly modeling the interaction of a trade union with monetary policy, it has been argued that the standard solution to the inflationary bias in monetary policy might actually be welfare reducing if the trade union has an...

In this paper, we shed more light on the subjective well-being of workfare participants and compare it to the well-being of unemployed and employed workers. We use data from a self-conducted survey among participants in workfare schemes in Germany. We examine two subdimensions of subjective...

Economic models of climate policy (or policies to combat other environmental problems) typically neglect psychological adaptation to changing life circumstances. People may adapt or become more sensitive, to different degrees, to a deteriorated environment. The present paper addresses these...

Previous studies find that past unemployment reduces life satisfaction even after reemployment for non-monetary reasons (unemployment scarring). It is not clear, however, whether this scarring is only caused by employment-related factors, such as worsened working conditions, or increased future...

Nach langen Verhandlungen haben sich SPD und CDU/CSU auf eine Große Koalition geeinigt. Ulrich Kater, Deka Bank, sieht in dem Koalitionsvertrag »viel Pragmatismus in Bezug auf die Befriedigung von Anspruchsgruppen, wenig Vor­ausschauendes auf künftige Herausforderungen, negative Konsequenzen...