We document heterogeneity in occupational employment dynamics in response to government spending shocks. Employment rises most strongly in pink-collar occupations, while employment in blue-collar occupations is hardly affected. We develop a business-cycle model that explains the heterogeneous...

This study empirically investigates the direct incidence of the corporate income tax through wage bargaining, using an industry-region level panel data set on all corporations in Germany over the period 1998 to 2006. Our measure of direct incidence for the first time accounts for employment...

In recessions, predominantly men lose their jobs, which has been described by the term "mancessions". Against this background, we analyze whether fiscal expansions foster job creation predominantly for men. Yet, we find empirically that fiscal shocks lead to employment growth that is larger for...

Estimates of Frisch labor-supply elasticities are larger for women than for men. We show that standard labor-supply regressions tend to overestimate this gender difference. In couples with joint borrowing constraints, wage-rate fluctuations of the secondary earner are less important for the...

We characterize optimal redistribution in a dynastic economy with observable human capital and hidden ability. We compute the optimal allocation and show how it can be implemented with student loans or means-tested grants. The numerical results reveal that human capital investment should decline...

We show that more human capital improves incentives in a standard optimal taxation problem: common assumptions about preferences and technology imply that the disutility of labor decreases less strongly in unobserved ability if agents have more human capital. Human capital thus reduces the...