Child care pension benefits in Germany are designed to compensate for maternal employment interruptions due to child-birth. In comparison to most family benefits, child care pension benefits are accumulated upon child birth but only become effective on the verge of retirement. Hence, whether...

This paper uses administrative data to investigate how a change in pension wealth affects a mother's employment decision after child birth. I exploit the extension of the child care pension benefit in 1992 as a natural experiment in a regression discontinuity design to estimate short- and...

Germany's tax system places a relatively strong emphasis on direct taxes, particularly on labour. At the same time, revenues from the inheritance and gift tax are relatively low. This points towards a large-scale transfer of wealth from one generation to the next that is largely untaxed and...