The global imbalances of the 2000s and the recent global financial crisis are intimately connected. Both originate in the combination of economic policies adopted by the two key economies, the US and China. Global financial markets served as a transmission belt, both during the boom as during...

This paper addresses the question of whether and how easy monetary policy may lead to excesses in financial and real asset markets and ultimately result in financial dislocation. It presents evidence suggesting that periods when short-term interest rates have been persistently and significantly...

Why do the children of wealthy parents accumulate more wealth than children from poorer backgrounds? Does parental wealth have a role in determining young people's earnings, saving choices, returns to wealth and access to homeownership? How much wealth do parents give directly to their children?...

This paper presents the multiple imputation model for the imputation of the missing values of the Austrian Household Survey on Housing Wealth 2008. It is based on Bayesian inference and on the fully conditional specification approach. Both theoretical framework and model specification are...

Rising wealth inequality is both a topic in recent policy discussion and in the social sciences. Despite the general interest in wealth concentration, we know only little about the largest privately held fortunes. To help fill this gap we analyze the historical origins of Germany's 1,032 largest...

Wohnungsgenossenschaften dienen nicht primär der Gewinnerzielung und -ausschüttung, sondern bilden Rücklagen und vergrößern ihren Wohnungsbestand, von dessen günstiger Nutzung die Genossen profitieren. Dies kann mit Stiftungen verglichen werden und führt zu verschiedenen hier diskutierten...

Bereits Adam Smith weist darauf hin, dass gute politische Institutionen Wachstum und Entwicklung fördern. Was aber sind gute politische Institutionen, und warum haben sie sich in verschiedenen Ländern unterschiedlich entwickelt? Diese Fragen leiten die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes.Im...

Einkommensungleichheit und relative Einkommensarmut dominieren seit langem die sozialpolitische Diskussion in Deutschland, während – auch aus Gründen eingeschränkter Datenverfügbarkeit – die personelle Vermögensverteilung vergleichsweise unzureichend erforscht ist. Der vorliegende...

In this paper we analyse old-age retirement decisions of Slovenian men and women eligible to retire in the period 1997-2003. In comparison to established market economies, we find relatively high hazard rates of retirement that decline with age. This peculiar pattern can be partly attributed to...