We use an experiment to study the effect of ex-post sharing rules on relationship-specific investments in an incomplete contracting context. We find that no power structure can induce first-best investments and that equally productive partners reach more efficient outcomes with a balanced power...

Am 28. Oktober 2011 wurde in Berlin der 8. Familienbericht an die Bundesministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend übergeben. Er beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema »Zeit für Familie« und mit den Notwendigkeiten und Möglichkeiten einer Familienzeitpolitik. Für die Erstellung des...

Mit der von der Bundesregierung in Auftrag gegebenen Gesamtevaluation ehe- und familienbezogener Leistungen wurden erstmals zentrale Instrumente der deutschen Familienpolitik systematisch und umfassend evaluiert. Dabei wurden folgende familienpolitische Ziele vorgegeben: die Sicherung der...

We present a non-cooperative model of a family’s time allocation between work and a home-produced public good, and examine whether the income tax should apply to couples or individuals. While tax-induced labor supply distortions lead to overprovision of the public good, spouses’ failure to...

Germany has the lowest birth rate among all OECD countries. To encourage fertility, the federal government has recently introduced a set of reforms that led to a substantial expansion of public child care for under three year old children. Using administrative county-level data, we exploit...

While many commentators perceive unemployment to be a key risk factor for intimate partner violence, the empirical evidence remains limited. We combine individual-level data from the British Crime Survey (BCS) with local labor market data to estimate the effects of total and gender-specific...

In Germany, it has become conventional wisdom that the economic uncertainty associated fixed-term employment contracts prevents young couples from realizing their desire to have children. From a research perspective, it is however far from clear whether fixed-term contracts are the obstacle to...

Am 28. Oktober 2011 wurde in Berlin der 8. Familienbericht an die Bundesministerin für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend übergeben. Er beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema »Zeit für Familie« und mit den Notwendigkeiten und Möglichkeiten einer Familienzeitpolitik. Für die Erstellung des...

This paper explores the implications of gender-based income taxation in a non-cooperative model of a couple’s time allocation between market work and providing a household public good. We find that the optimal structure of differential taxation by gender is solely determined by spouses’...

This paper formulates a model to examine the effects of changes in tax-benefit policy on the behavior of divorced parents and the well-being of children in single-parent households. Noncustodial parents choose the level of a child support payment to transfer to custodians. These, in turn, decide...