This paper integrates into public economics a biologically founded, stochastic process of individual ageing. The novel approach enables us to investigate the interaction between health and retirement policy in order to quantitatively characterize the optimal joint design of the social insurance...

This paper examines the role of the sociocultural background of students for choosing STEM fields in university. We combine rich survey data on university graduates in Switzerland with municipality level information from the census as well as nationwide elections and referenda to characterize a...

This paper provides a novel macroeconomic model that is specifically designed to investigate the evolution of housing wealth. To capture the importance of land as an input factor for housing production and for the evolution of wealth in a growing economy, the analysis builds on three premises:...

In absence of randomized controlled experiments, identification is often aimed via instrumental variable (IV) strategies, typically two-stage least squares estimations. According to Bayes' rule, however, under a low ex ante probability that a hypothesis is true (e.g. that an excluded instrument...

In absence of randomized controlled experiments, identification is often aimed via instrumental variable (IV) strategies, typically two-stage least squares estimations. According to Bayes’ rule, however, under a low ex ante probability that a hypothesis is true (e.g. that an excluded...

The upward sloping trend of rents and house prices has initiated a debate on the consequences of surging housing costs for wealth inequality and welfare. We employ a frictionless two-sectoral macroeconomic model with a housing sector to investigate the dynamics of wealth inequality and the...

ein Maßnahmenpaket zur Überwindung der Euro-Schuldenkrise geeinigt. Georg Milbradt, TU Dresden, ist der Ansicht, dass die verabredeten Maßnahmen die Probleme in der Eurozone nicht lösen werden. Zwar knüpfen die Vorschläge an wichtige Probleme an, wie z.B. Schuldenstand, private...

We investigate the future of human longevity, morbidity and health costs in a novel, multi-period OLG model with endogenous medical R&D and endogenous survival. Our calibrated model implies substantial future increases in longevity that are associated with both reductions in morbidity and a...

Die bisherigen Daten scheinen auf eine lediglich begrenzte Einkommenskonvergenz zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland anstatt auf eine Angleichung in absehbarer Zeit hinzudeuten. In diesem Beitrag konzentrieren sich die Autoren auf die Frage, ob in Deutschland zukünftig vollständige Konvergenz der...

In this paper we set up an overlapping generations model of gerontological founded human aging that takes the interaction between R&D-driven medical progress and access to health care into account. We use the model to explore potential futures of human health and longevity. For the baseline...