In many federations, fiscal equalization schemes soften fiscal imbalances across the member states. Such schemes usually imply that the member states internalize only a small fraction of the additional tax revenue from an expansion of the state-specific tax bases, while the remainder of the...

In view of rising concerns over increasing inequality in the European Union since the financial crisis, this study provides an inequality decomposition of the overall European income distribution by country. The EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions are our empirical basis. Inequality...

Two conversion schemes are usually employed for assessing personal-income inequality from household equivalent incomes: to weight household units by size or by needs.Using data from the Luxembourg Income Study, we show the sensitivity of country inequality rankings to conversion schemes and...

This study provides the first absolute income mobility estimates for postwar Germany. Using various micro data sources, we uncover a steep decline in absolute mobility rates from 81 percent to 59 percent for children's birth cohorts 1962 through 1988. This trend is robust across different ages,...

This paper uncovers ongoing trends in idiosyncratic earnings volatility across generations by decomposing residual earnings auto-covariances into a permanent and a transitory component. We employ data on complete earnings life cycles forprime age men born 1935 through 1974 that covers earnings...

In aging societies, information on how to reform pension systems is essential to policy makers. This study scrutinizes effects of early retirement disincentives on retirement behavior, individual welfare, pensions and public budget. We employ administrative pension data and a detailed model of...

This paper documents the magnitude, pattern, and evolution of lifetime earnings inequality in Germany. Based on a large sample of earning biographies from social security records, we show that the intra-generational distribution of lifetime earnings of male workers has a Gini coefficient around...

Who makes it to the top? We use the leading, socio-economic survey in Germany supplemented by extensive data on the rich to answer this question. We identify the key predictors for belonging to the top 1 percent of income, wealth, and both distributions jointly. Although we consider many, only a...

Understanding the distributional impacts of market-based climate policies is crucial to design economically efficient climate change mitigation policies that are socially acceptable and avoid adverse impacts on the poor. Empirical studies that examine the distributional impacts of carbon pricing...

Equivalence Scales are a tool for removing the heterogeneity of household sizes in the measurement of inequality, and affect poverty assessments and poverty lines. We address the disadvantage that poor households may suffer due to their reduced ability to share goods within the household. This...