This paper presents a comprehensive view of life-time taxation including both explicit taxation through the general tax system and implicit taxation via the retirement benefit formula. Individuals are heterogeneous with respect to productivity. It is shown that the optimal structure of...

This paper analysis the robustness of the causal relationship between schooling and wages. Different estimators and instruments are compared under the assumption of heterogeneous returns to schooling. A data set from Germany is employed. It is shown that the results depend crucially on the...

In the discussion about employment protection, little attention has been given to judicial mistakes. In most countries, only in the case of dismissals due to economic reasons, the employee is entitled to a severance payment. Given judicial mistakes when reviewing a dismissal, shirkers might...

This paper investigates the evolution of wages and the recent tendency to rising wage inequality in Germany, based on the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for 1984 to 2004. Between 1984 and 1994 the wage distribution was fairly stable. Wage inequality started to increase around 1994 in...