This paper considers optimal linear tax structures that are differentiated according to group membership. Groups can be heterogeneous with respect to both preferences and abilities. Contrary to most arguments in favour of tax privileges for certain groups, e.g. gender-based taxation, it is shown...

This paper deals with discrete labour supply decisions of different groups of persons in response to a change in net wage rates. The centrepiece of this approach is individuals' switching between working time categories, while facing switching costs that arise when people expand or reduce...

This paper compares student evaluation of teaching on the web site MeinProf.de to the standard evaluation procedures at German universities. While MeinProf offers the advantage of a broad, publicly available database, a number of theoretical and econometric problems emerge. Many of these...

Based on the premise that fairness is different from equity and that it is primarily used in in-formal contexts we present an economic approach to fairness. Discussing the results of behav-ioral economics reveals the experience that people do not accept a monetary offer even if that collides...

Education decisions determine a great part of future income. This paper argues that if education is financed by parents' current income a lump-sum tax reduces inequality if all parents have strict investment incentives. However, if some parents are indifferent there is a possible decrease in the...

The (socio-)psychological concepts of individual aspiration for con- formity and consistency are integrated into the rational-choice frame- work. By using this integrative approach it is shown that after a shock the aspiration for conformity results in an equilibrium which deviates from the homo...

The political blessings of federalism are the core of our discussion. These benefits are operationalized as the decrease in the number of outvoted in a federal system with majority voting as an important source of regime satisfaction. The approach originates from the work of Roland Pennock who...

Post-docs signal their ability to do science and teaching to get a tenure giving universities the possibility of separating highly talented agents from the low talented ones. However separating that means signalling effort for the highly talented becomes even more important in a two-dimensional...

The paper investigates the effects of intra-family talent transmission when human capital exhibits indivisibilities and parental financing of education involves borrowing constraints. Positive talent correlation reduces social mobility but steady state inequality and macroeconomic...

Using a new panel dataset comprising publication and appointment data for 889 German academic economists over a quarter of a century, we confirm the familiar hypothesis that publications are important for professorial appointments, but find only a small negative effect of appointments on...