We use income satisfaction data in order to estimate equivalence scales. Our method differs from previous attempts to use satisfaction data for this purpose in that it can be used to estimate or evaluate any given parametric equivalence scale. It can also be employed to investigate specific...

We address the long standing question of whether production factors are paid their marginal products. We propose a new approach that circumvents the need to specify production functions and to compare marginal products to factor payments. Our approach is based on a simple equation that directly...

We study life-cycle educational transitions in an education system characterized by early tracking and institutionalized branches of academic and vocational training but with the possibility to revise earlier decisions at later stages. Our model covers all major transitions ranging from...

We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the years before 2005/2006, this trend was stopped after 2005/2006. Among many other...

Using data from the German Structure of Earnings Survey (GSES), this paper studies the role of changes in working hours for the increase in male and female earnings inequality between 2001 and 2010. We provide both classic decompositions of the variance of log earnings into the variances of...

This study revisits the increase in wage inequality in Germany. Accounting for changes in various sets of observables, composition changes explain a large part of the increase in wage inequality among full-time workers. The composition effects are larger for females than for males, and...