We have developed and implemented a new sampling strategy to better represent very wealthy individuals in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Our strategy is based on the empirical regularity that the very wealthy have at least part of their assets invested in businesses, and that businesses...

The idea of higher wealth taxes to finance the mounting public debt in the wake of the financial crises is gaining ground in several OECD countries. We evaluate the revenue and distributional effects of a one-time capital levy on personal net wealth that is currently on the German political...

The idea of higher wealth taxes to finance the mounting public debt in the wake of the financial crises is gaining ground in several OECD countries. We evaluate the revenue and distributional effects of a one-time capital levy on personal net wealth that is currently on the German political...

We revisit the alleged retirement consumption puzzle. According to the life-cycle theory, foreseeable income reductions such as those around retirement should not affect consumption. However, we first recall that given higher leisure endowments after retirement, the theory does predict a fall of...

The saving ratio of households in Germany has increased in the past few years when the income trend was weak. This could be due to precautionary saving. In this paper, the importance of precautionary saving against income uncertainty is analyzed empirically using micro data from the German...