In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a €50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the...

We explore the role of social capital in the spread of the recent Covid-19 pan­demic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Swe­den, Switzerland and the UK. We exploit within-country variation in social capital and Covid-19 cases to show that high-social-capital...

Nach der Umstellung der geräteabhängigen Rundfunkgebühren zu einem Rundfunkbeitrag pro Wohnung ist die Beitragsbefreiung der Mindestsicherungsempfänger geblieben. Hierdurch entstehen Grenzfälle, die mit negativen Anreizen verbunden sind. Die Autoren fordern daher, dass der Rundfunkbeitrag...