Closely following recent innovations in the literature on the multidimensional measurement of poverty, this paper provides similar measures for the top of the distribution using a dual cutoff method to identify individuals, who can be considered as rich in a multidimensional setting. We use this...

In this paper we document inequality trends in wages, hours worked, earnings, consumption, and wealth for Germany from the last twenty years. We generally find that inequality was relatively stable in West Germany until the German unification (which happened politically in 1990 and in our data...

This paper reports on trends in inequality of the distribution of household disposable wealth in West Germany from 1973 to 1998, and compares the changes in the size distribution of household disposable wealth in West and East Germany between 1993 and 1998. The empirical findings are based on...

This paper studies the impact of the Protestant Reformation on wealth distribution and inequality in confessionally divided Germany, between 1400 and 1800. The Reformation expanded social welfare, but provided it in a particularistic way to insiders only. This gave Protestantism an ambiguous...

The dissertation elaborates on topics that are related to (i) intergenerational transfers of wealth and to (ii) how government ideology and elections influence outcomes (income inequality and budget consolidation) and political processes (fiscal planning and policy advice). The dissertation...

This study provides new evidence on top income shares in Germany from the period of industrialization to the present. Income concentration was high in the nineteenth century, dropped sharply after World War I and during the hyperinflation years of the 1920s, and increased rapidly throughout the...

We study the dynamics of income inequality, capital concentration, and voting outcomes before 1914. Based on new panel data for Prussian counties and districts we re-evaluate the key economic debate between Marxists and their critics before 1914. We show that the increase in inequality was...

Earlier research on poverty failed to provide us with consistent measures of its prevalence across space and time. This is due to the limitations of the available sources and to the difficulty of applying to them the poverty definitions of modern social science. This article discusses different...

This study provides new evidence on top income shares in Germany from the period of industrialization to the present. Income concentration was high in the nineteenth century, dropped sharply after World War I and during the hyperinflation years of the 1920s, and increased rapidly throughout the...