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...

Using a Mincer-type wage function, we estimate cohort effects in the returns to education for West German workers born between 1925 and 1974. The main problem to be tackled in the specification is to separately identify cohort, experience, and possibly also age and year effects in the returns....

"The development of the western German wage structure in the 1980s has been analysed on the basis of the socio-economic panel (SOEP) and the IAB employment sample (IABS). We demonstrate that the large increase in inequality which was ascertained by previous studies on the basis of the IABS can...

A popular argument for a federal minimum wage is that it will prevent in-work poverty and reduce income inequality. We examine this assertion for Germany, a welfare state with a relative generous means-tested social minimum and high marginal tax rates. Our analysis is based on a microsimulation...

Basing on a microsimulation model, the integrated data-base from the German pension insurance and the German Socio-Economic Panel Study we analyze future pensions across cohorts born between 1937–71. The microsimulation model accounts for changes in the individuals\' earnings activities in the...