As climate change intensifies, flood events are becoming more frequent and more destructive across Europe. In Germany, catastrophic floods in 2021 caused over EUR 40 billion in damages, prompting a large-scale government aid response. At the same time, only about 50 percent of residential...

Dealing with the consequences of climate change will put an increasing burden on public and private finances. We use the example of floods in a survey experiment among 8,000 German households to elicit households' preferences for climate adaptation policies. In Germany, as in many countries, we...

Commitment devices offer an opportunity to restrict future choices. However, strict commitments may deter participation. Using a school-based commitment savings program for children to save for educational expenses in Uganda, we compare an account fully-committed to school expenses to an account...

Das Solidaritätsprinzip prägt die gesetzliche Krankenversicherung (GKV). Bislang leisten rund vier von zehn Versicherten einen Solidarbeitrag, weil sie mehr einzahlen, als es ihren alters- und geschlechtsabhängigen Durchschnittsausgaben entspricht. Andersherum ist es bei sechs von zehn...

The aging of the populations in the OECD countries has prompted various calls for reforming the existing pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems. Currently, there is renewed discussion in the United States about partial privatization where a fraction of the social security payroll tax would be...

In the modern welfare state a substantial part of an individual's tax bill is transferred back to the same individual taxpayer in the form of social transfers. This provides a rationale for financing part of social insurance through mandatory savings accounts. We analyze the behavioral and...