Although being heavily analyzed and discussed, there is neither a theoretical nor an empirical consensus on the incidence of the property tax in rental markets. In this paper, we suggest a novel theoretical approach by introducing property taxation into a Rosen-Roback type local labor market...

The standard labor-supply literature typically assumes that the labor supply response to wage increases is the same as that for equivalent wage decreases. However, evidence from the behavioral-economics literature suggests that people are loss averse and thus perceive losses differently than...

Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers within Socialist East Germany during the 1980s and accounting for potential endogeneity,...

We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the years before 2005/2006, this trend was stopped after 2005/2006. Among many other...

We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the years before 2005/2006, this trendwas stopped after 2005/2006. Among many other factors,...

We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the years before 2005/2006, this trend was stopped after 2005/2006. Among many other...

We investigate the long-run effects of government surveillance on civic capital and economic performance, studying the case of the Stasi in East Germany. Exploiting regional variation in the number of spies and administrative features of the system, we combine a border discontinuity design with...

We study how profit taxation affects plants' R&D spending and innovation activities. Relying on geocoded survey panel data which approximately covers the universe of R&D-active plants in Germany, we exploit around 7,300 changes in the municipal business tax rate over the period 1987–2013 for...

We study the consequences of a large-scale austerity program targeting financially-constrained municipalities in Germany. For identification, we exploit the quasi-random assignment of treatment among equally-distressed municipalities using a difference-in-differences design. The policy helped...

We study how profit taxation affects plants' R&D spending and innovation activities. Relying on geocoded survey panel data which approximately covers the universe of R&D-active plants in Germany, we exploit around 7,300 changes in the municipal business tax rate over the period 1987-2013 for...