Does the supply of a welfare state create its own demand? Many economic scholars studying welfare arrangements refer to Say’s law and insinuate a self-destructive welfare state. However, little is known about the empirical validity of these assumptions and hypotheses. We study the dynamic...

In the Great Recession market income of the households in Austria has been reduced and unemployment increased. In this paper we examine the impact of automatic stabilizers on cushioning such income losses. We use ITABENA, an Austrian tax-benefit model, to analyze how shocks on market income and...

We study the response of regional employment and nominal wages to trade liberalization, exploiting the natural experiment provided by the opening of Central and Eastern European markets after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990. Using data for Austrian municipalities, we examine differential...

Gender inequalities in mortality/life expectancy have been a major area of research in the social sciences since the 1970s. However, the questions posed and the research strategies used are still in a state of flux. In the present paper we shed some light on two related questions: (i) Which...

Firm turnover has recently attracted increased interest in economic research. The entry of new firms increases competition and promises efficiency gains. Moreover, changes in the market structure influence productivity growth, because firm entry usually leads to increased innovation. The health...

This paper extends the previous literature on optimal redistributive taxation in the presence of externalities to a multi-externality setting. While taxes on income and on 'clean' commodities are still unaffected by the externalities, which confirms previous results, I find that the existence of...

Using detailed micro data on earnings and employment, I analyze the effects of immigration on the wage distribution of native male workers in Austria. I find that immigration has heterogeneous effects on wages, differing by type of work as well as the wage level. While there are small , but...

Government agencies and other national and international institutions are asked to perform forecasts over the medium term. In particular, the EU Stability and Growth Pact contains the obligation to formulate stability programmes over four years, covering a general economic outlook as well as the...

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of...