In Germany, there is an ongoing debate about how to increase the efficiency of the social security system and especially its financing. The aim of this paper is to simulate different financing systems for Germany. The introduction of a Liberal British or the Southern Greek financing system...

In Germany, there is an ongoing debate about how to increase the efficiency of the social security system and especially its financing. The aim of this paper is to simulate different financing systems for Germany. The introduction of a Liberal British or the Southern Greek financing system...

Improving energy efficiency is one of the three pillars of the European energy and climate targets for 2020 and has led to the introduction of several policy measures to promote energy efficiency. The paper analyzes the effectiveness of subsidies in increasing energy efficiency in residential...

In this paper, we develop a microeconomic approach to deduce greenhouse gas abatement cost curves of the residential heating sector. By accounting for household behavior, we find that welfare-based abatement costs are generally higher than pure technical equipment costs. Our results are based on...

Due to the increasing European import dependency, significant additional natural gas volumes will be required. In addition to the Nord Stream pipeline, the Nabucco and South Stream pipeline are projects planned for the next decade to provide further gas supplies to the European market. As one...

Abstract General Equilibrium Models have become a powerful tool of policy analysis in recent years. We provide an overview of the theoretical concept of Applied General Equilibrium Framework by reviewing the standard theory of producer and consumer behaviour. Moreover we discuss several popular...

Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Technologie, Bonn 2012 (35 Seiten)

In this contribution we analyze Paul Kirchhof's income tax policy proposal with regard to conflicting goals of tax revenue, distributional effects and efficiency considerations. While effects on labor supply are moderate, the tax policy proposal reduces government budget revenue by 20 billion...

The German tax system is usually considered as one of the most progressive ones in Europe, especially due to its unique mathematical formula of continuously increasing marginal tax rates in the personal income tax. However, other taxes such as indirect or payroll taxes need to be considered as...

There is still considerable dispute about the magnitude of labor supply elasticities. While differences in micro and macro estimates are recently attributed to frictions and adjustment costs, we show that relatively low labor supply elasticities derived from microeconometric models can also be...