We address the long standing question of whether production factors are paid their marginal products. We propose a new approach that circumvents the need to specify production functions and to compare marginal products to factor payments. Our approach is based on a simple equation that directly...

Ziel des vorliegenden Papiers ist es, den Einfluss makroökonomischer Größen auf die Einkommensungleichheit zu untersuchen. Auf Basis des sozio-ökonomischen Panels (SOEP) analysieren wir erstmalig diesen Zusammenhang für Deutschland. Dabei ist zu beobachten, dass die makroökonomischen...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), this paper analyzes the dynamics of equivalent income in Germany in the eighties and nineties. Special emphasis is given to the separation of permanent and transitory components, the persistence of transitory shocks and their implications...

We propose a framework for comparing the relationship between poverty and personal characteristics across countries (or across years), and use it to compare levels and patterns of relative poverty in the USA, Great Britain and Germany during the 1990s. The higher aggregate poverty rates in the...