Public investment, for instance in infrastructure, has been constantly decreasing for four decades. New research by RWI for 13 OECD-countries shows: this development significantly correlates with population aging. Senior citizens do not value future payoffs of infrastructure projects and other...

I study the impact of old-age assistance on mortality using the introduction of public pensions in the UK in 1909 as a quasi-natural experiment. Exploiting the newly created pension eligibility age through a difference-in-difference as well as an event-time design, I show that elderly mortality...

The strong association between income and mortality raises the question whether more generous social security systems could improve poor people’s health outcomes. Thus, in this paper, I analyze whether a major social security innovation, the introduction of social pensions targeted at poor...

Rising public pension generosity has frequently been cited as one reason for the (persistently) declining fertility rates in many advanced economies. Despite the theoretical appeal, empirical evidence on the pension-fertility nexus is limited. To fill this gap, I study country-level fertility...

Für das Jahr 2016 zeichnet sich eine deutliche Zunahme des Bruttoinlandsprodukts Nordrhein-Westfalen um 1,4% ab, nach der Stagnation im Jahr 2015. Belastend wirkt weiterhin die Schwäche der Industrieproduktion, während die Wertschöpfung im Dienstleistungssektor und im Bausektor kräftig...

Time preferences vary by age. Notably, according to experimental studies, senior citizens tend to discount future payoffs more heavily than working-age individuals. Based on these findings, we hypothesize that demographic change has contributed to the cut-back in government-financed investment...