This paper examines the patterns of educational assortative mating in East and West Germany. In the literature it is well known that individuals do not mate randomly with respect to social and cultural traits, and that highly assortative mating can lead to polarization and exacerbate economic...

Empirical evidence on the degree of business-tax shifting to employees via the wage level is highly controversial and rare. It remains open to which extent the tax burden is shifted, whether there are differences for tax increases and decreases, or whether there exists some treatment...

This article revisits an analysis by Frondel, Ritter and Schmidt (2008) of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act, which legislates a system of feed-in tariff s to promote the use of renewable energies. As in the original article, we argue that Germany’s support scheme subsidizes renewable energy...

This paper estimates the employment effects of industry-specific, collectively-bargained minimum wages in Germany for two occupations associated with the construction sector. I propose a truly exogenous control group in contrast to the control group design used in the literature. Further, a...

Volunteering plays a prominent role in the charitable provision of goods and services, yet we know relatively little about why individuals spend time and money to the charity. Assuming that volunteering is a consumption good, we analyze the determinants of individuals’ charitable cash...

This study puts the monetary transmission process in the eurozone between 2003 and 2011 under closer scrutiny. For this purpose, we investigate the interest rate pass-through from money market to various loan rates for up to twelve countries of the European Monetary Union. Applying different...

This paper provides an efficient way to generate a set of random choices on a set of budgets which satisfy the Generalised Axiom of Revealed Preferences (GARP), that is, they are consistent with utility maximisation. The choices are drawn from an approximate uniform distribution on the...

This paper studies the effect of parenthood timing on future wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we employ an instrumental variable approach to identify the causal effect of delaying parenthood on wages of mothers and fathers. Consistent with previous studies, we...

Monetary policy rules have been considered as fundamental protection against inflation. However, empirical evidence for a correlation between rules and inflation is relatively weak. In this paper, we first discuss likely causes for this weak link and present the argument that monetary commitment...

The present paper explores the link between poverty as capability deprivation and current life satisfaction. Using German panel data, I examine both whether capability deprivation does hurt and whether individuals eventually adapt. To detect capability deprivation I suggest relying on the...