The thesis addresses the question of how poverty can be overcome by education. The starting point is the following type of poverty trap: poverty forces parents to send their children to work to secure the survival of the household. Due to child labor, children do not attend school and do not...

Political economy aspects make progressive income taxation and taxation of capital income imperative in practise. International tax competition and profit shifting, in turn, put pressure on corporate and capital taxes. Hence, the scope for a politically feasible change-over to a status of...

Statistical offices do not provide sufficiently disaggregated tax statistics for calculating the relative tax burden of SMEs. We estimate the respective average and median tax burden of small, medium-sized and big corporations in Germany for the period 1998 to 2007 using enterprises micro panel...

We investigate the neutrality features of an ACE tax reform proposal suggested for the company tax reform in Germany. As a pure ACE tax system is not feasible in practice, certain elements have been changed in the proposal: the traditional income tax of non-corporations remains progressive; there...

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the perceived fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a two-period model of individual life-time utility maximization, we predict that persons with higher perceived...

A long tradition in economics explores the association between the quality of formal institutions and economic performance. The literature on the relationship between such institutions and happiness is, however, rather limited, and inconclusive. In this paper, we revisit the findings from recent...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the interaction between the perceived and the actual fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a simple model of individual labor-market participation under...

We argue that perceived fairness of the income generation process affects the association between income inequality and subjective well-being, and that there are systematic differences in this regard between countries that are characterized by a high or, respectively, low level of actual...