We analyze the redistributive (dis)advantages of a minimum wage over income taxation in competitive labor markets. A minimum wage causes more unemployment, but also leads to more skill formation as unemployment is concentrated on low-skilled workers. A simple condition based on three sufficient...

This paper explores whether more generous social spending polices in fact lead to less income inequality, or if redistributive outcomes are offset by behavioral disincentive effects. To account for the inherent endogeneity of social policies with regard to inequality levels, I apply the System...

This paper explores if more generous social spending polices in fact lead to less income inequality, or if redistributive outcomes are offset by behavioral disincentive effects. To account for the inherent endogeneity of social policies with regard to inequality levels, I apply the System GMM...

The discussion paper is concerned with the interplay between demography and macroeconomics on one hand and macroeconomics and income inequality on the other hand. For this purpose, several estimation equations are derived by econometric methods (on the empirical basis of the 1984-2010 German...

Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), both income inequality and poverty are considered for Germany in front of and during the economic crisis 2008-2010. This comprises binary logistic regressions where it is tested whether a person is belonging to a certain income region or...

Recent discussions about rising inequality in industrialized countries have triggered calls for more government intervention and redistribution. Due to obvious behavioral effects caused by redistribution, it is however not clear whether redistributional policies are indeed able to combat...

This paper provides a critical overview of the state of the art in the economics literature on structural reforms. It takes stock of theoretical developments, measurement efforts and of the econometric evidence. We start with a simple theoretical framework for the relationship between structural...

This study complements existing literature by investigating how investment-driven finance affects inequality in Africa. The empirical evidence is based on restricted and unrestricted Two-Stage Least Squares and a pre-crisis periodicity (1980-2002). Inequality is measured with estimated household...

How do different components of the tax and transfer systems affect disposable income inequality? This paper explores the redistributive effects of different tax benefit instruments in the enlarged EU based on two approaches. Inequality analysis based on the standard approach suggests that...