This paper applies multidimensional affluence measures to a new dataset on income and wealth in 15 Eurozone countries. We start our analysis by examining the income and wealth distributions separately for each country, and extend it to a multidimensional setting by considering the joint...

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...

This paper suggests multidimensional affluence measures for the top of the distribution. In contrast to commonly used top income shares, they allow the analysis of the extent, intensity and breadth of affluence in several dimensions within a common framework. We illustrate this by analyzing the...

This contribution develops a blueprint for a European fiscal union. We argue that a viable European fiscal union can be constructed without joint liability for public debt or a centralized government with a large common budget. Such a fiscal union should combine elements of market discipline...

The case of German reunification has been subject to extensive research on earnings inequality and labor market integration. however, little is known about the development of equality of opportunity (EOp) in East and West Germany after 1990.Using German micro data, we empirically analyze how...

Many studies have estimated the effect of circumstances on income acquisition. Perhaps surprisingly, the fraction of inequality attributable to circumstances is usually quite small - in the advanced democracies, on the order of 20%. One reason for this is the lack of data on circumstance...

This paper suggests multidimensional affluence measures for the top of the distribution. In contrast to commonly used top income shares, they allow the analysis of the extent, intensity and breadth of affluence in several dimensions within a common framework. We illustrate this by analyzing the...

Die Überwindung der aktuellen Stagnation und die Rückkehr zu einem nachhaltigen Wirtschaftswachstum wird die zentrale wirtschafts- und finanzpolitische Herausforderung der nächsten Bundesregierung sein. Die deutsche Volkswirtschaft steht vor großen strukturellen Herausforderungen, wie dem...