Governments are often willing to subsidize firms on the verge of bankruptcy. The main economic rationale behind these interventions is that a plant closure would not only harm the workers employed in that plant, but create a domino effect on the regional economy as a whole. Yet, little is still...

-

We examine how intergenerational income mobility responds to structural changes in a simple theoretical model of intergenerational transmission, deviating from the existing literature by explicitly analyzing the transition path between steady states. We find that mobility depends not only on...

Conflicting views about the degree of long-run mobility across multiple generations persist because direct empirical evidence is scarce. Predictions are instead routinely derived by iteration of intergenerational measures, a procedure which implies high long-run mobility even when...

Joint expertise with NIRAS Consultants and AMS for the European Commission, Bonn 2008 (159 pages)

Research on intergenerational income mobility is based on current income since data on lifetime income are typically not available for two generations. However, using snapshots of income over shorter periods causes a so-called life-cycle bias if the snapshots cannot mimic lifetime outcomes....

I argue that the empirical strategies for estimation of the intergenerational elasticity of lifetime earnings that are currently employed in the literature might not eliminate bias arising from life-cycle effects. Specifically, I demonstrate that procedures based on the generalized...

Bericht im Auftrag der Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft, Bonn 2007 (16 Seiten)