This study presents a comparative analysis of regulatory thresholds applicable to firms in France and in Germany. A central question tackled by the report is whether regulations related to limits on firms’ employment appear to prevent French firms from growing above these thresholds. The first...

This paper exploits the significant reduction in impediments to labor mobility in the process of German re-unification in order to identify labor supply shocks in the West German labor market. The focus is on the quasi-experiment of the border removal in the regions situated at the German -...

This paper studies how imposing norms on contribution behavior affects individuals' intrinsic motivation. We consider an urban area in Germany where the Catholic Church collects a local church levy as a charitable donation, despite the fact that the levy is legally a tax. In cooperation with the...

This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians' outside earnings. We propose a simple theoretical model with politicians facing a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The model has a testable...

The Annual Congress of the German Economic Association has become one of the largest national meetings of professional economists. The contributed papers at the Congress undergo a rigorous and competitive selection procedure where only about one half of all submissions are accepted for...