When comparing tax benefit systems across Europe, Germany is usually regarded as a country with a high level of taxes and contributions which is often seen as a main challenge for the economic performance of the welfare state in terms of growth and unemployment. Especially the progressive...

In Germany, there is an ongoing debate about how to increase the efficiency of the social security system and especially its financing. The aim of this paper is to simulate different financing systems for Germany. The introduction of a Liberal British or the Southern Greek financing system...

In Germany, two observations can be tracked over the past 15 to 20 years: First, income inequality has constantly increased while, second, the average household size has been declining dramatically. The analysis of income distribution relies on equivalence-weighted incomes, which take into...

How can retirement savings be increased? We explore a unique policy change in the context of the German pension system to study this question. As of 2004, the German pension authority started to send out annual letters providing detailed and comprehensible information about the pension system...

Welfare programs are important for reducing poverty but create incentives for recipients to maximize their income by either reducing labor supply or manipulating taxable income. In this paper, we quantify the extent of such behavioral responses for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the US....

"Wohlstand für Alle" - dieses Versprechen verbinden viele Deutsche mit der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft. Vor dem Hintergrund der anhaltend hohen Einkommens und Vermögensungleichheit werden in der öffentlichen Debatte jedoch immer häufiger Zweifel an der Fähigkeit der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft...

Unser Steuer-, Abgaben- und Transfersystem ist gerade für Familien am unteren Ende der Einkommensskala nur bedingt leistungsgerecht. Es gilt daher, Steuern, Sozialabgaben und Transferleistungen so aufeinander abzustimmen, dass sich (zusätzliche) Erwerbsarbeit in jedem Fall lohnt.

In this paper, we present the first dynamic scoring exercise linking a microsimulation and a dynamic general equilibrium model for Europe. We illustrate our novel methodology analysing hypothetical reforms of the social insurance contributions system in Belgium. Our approach takes into account...

Abstract: Der Reformvorschlag von Joachim Mitschke strebt eine Vereinfachung des Steuersystems bei steigendem Wachstum und höherer Beschäftigung an. In diesem Buch werden die langfristigen Auswirkungen auf Grundlage des Steuer-Transfer-Simulationsmodells des Finanzwissenschaftlichen...