The employment behavior of mothers is strongly influenced by labor market regulations and certain institutional arrangements, which both vary greatly across European countries. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) 1994-2001 for Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, which...

We analyze the impact of changing employment patterns and pension reforms on the future level of public pensions across birth cohorts in Germany. The analysis is based on a rich dataset that combines household survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and process-produced...

This paper contributes to the debate about the optimal design of tax-transfer systems. Based on the theory of optimal taxation, combined with microsimulation and microeconometric techniques we derive the welfare function which makes the current German tax and transfer system for single women...

In this paper we develop a structural model of female employment and fertility which accounts for intertemporal feedback effects between the two outcomes. We identify the effect of financial incentives on the employment and fertility decision by exploiting variation in the tax and transfer...

We analyze the effects of three alternative proposals to reform the taxation of families relative to the current German system of joint taxation of couples and child allowances: a French-type family splitting and two full family splitting proposals. The empirical analysis of the effects of these...

We estimate the elasticity of enrollment into higher education with respect to the amount of means tested student aid (BAfoeG) provided by the federal government using the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP). Potential student aid is derived on the basis of a detailed tax-benefit microsimulation...

We evaluate three policy reforms targeted at older unemployed people: (i) an hourly wage subsidy, (ii) an in-work credit, and (iii) a subsidy of social security contributions on low wages. The work incentive, labour supply and welfare effects of these hypothetical reforms are analysed on the...

We analyse the role of health in determining the difference between desired and actual hours of work in a sample of German men using the Socio-Economic Panel Data for years 1996-2007. The effects of both self-assessed health and legal disability status are examined. About 60% of employees report...

In this paper, we address the question whether family support via the income tax system is more generous in France than in Germany, as it is often claimed in the public debate. We use two micro-data sets and a micro-simulation model to compare effective average tax rates for different household...

In this paper, I suggest an empirical framework for the analysis of mothers' labor supply and child care choices, explicitly taking into account access restrictions to subsidized child care. This is particularly important for countries such as Germany, where subsidized child care is rationed and...