Measures of individual happiness, or well-being, can guide labor market policies. Individual unemployment, as well as the rate of unemployment in society, have a negative effect on happiness. In contrast, employment protection and unemployment benefits can contribute to happiness—though when...

It is a well-established view amongst economists that good-looking people have a better chance of employment and can earn more than those who are less physically attractive. A “beauty premium” is particularly apparent in jobs where there is a productivity gain associated with good looks,...

A strong association between incomes across generations—with children from poor families likely to be poor as adults—is frequently considered an indicator of insufficient equality of opportunity. Studies of such “intergenerational persistence,” or lack of intergenerational mobility, are...

We provide a comprehensive empirical study on the factors that drive citizens' policy preferences regarding inheritance taxation. It builds on a representative survey among more than 1.000 German citizens in 2014 and 2015. Support for inheritance taxation is found to be driven by monetary...

We sketch a visionary strategy for Europe in which full employment is quickly regained by 2020, income inequality is reduced and the economies are more sustainable. We call this scenario "vibrant". It is contrasted with what would happen if present policies continue within the European Union...

We explore the redistributive effects of taxes and benefits in the 27 member states of the European Union (EU) using EUROMOD, the tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU. As well as describing redistributive effects in aggregate, we assess and compare the effectiveness of eight individual...

Interest in the emergence of a global middle class has resulted in a number of attempts to identify and enumerate who belongs to it . Current research provides wildly different estimates about the size and evolution of the global middle class because of a lack of consensus on appropriate...

Compared to the rest of Europe, Germany exhibits an especially high concentration of wealth. According to estimates based on a microsimulation model, a German wealth tax could generate an estimated ten to 20 billion euros per year in revenue-even with high tax allowances-and slightly reduce the...

Every year in Germany, an estimated 200 to 300 billion euros is gifted or inherited. Due to the extremely unequal distribution of wealth, these capital transfers are also highly concentrated. Approximately half of all transfers are less worth than 50,000 euros. Transfers of over 500,000 euros...

What share of total income in Germany is owned by the country's top income earners and how has this share developed over the past decade? Answers to these questions can be found both in representative survey data such as the longitudinal Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study and in administrative...