This paper quantifies the extent of heterogeneity in consumption responses to changes in real interest rates and house prices in the four largest economies in the euro area: France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. We first calibrate a life-cycle incomplete-markets model with a financial asset and...

Household credit, especially for mortgages, has doubled over the past years in the new European Union member countries, raising concerns about the economic and social consequences of household indebtedness in the event of a macroeconomic crisis. Using household survey data for 2005, 2006, and...

The wage policy of a German and a U.S. firm is comparatively analysed with a focus on the relation between wages and hierarchies. While prior studies examine only one particular firm, in this paper two plants of the same owners with similar production processes in different institutional...

Utilising a large representative data set for Germany, this study contrasts absenteeism of self-employed individuals and paid employees. We find that absence from work is clearly less prevalent among the self-employed than among paid employees. Only to a small extent, this difference can be...

Do differences in citizens' policy preferences hamper international cooperation in education policy? To gain comparative evidence on public preferences for education spending, we conduct representative experiments with information treatments in Switzerland using identical survey techniques...

In many European countries, wages are determined by collective bargaining agreements intended to improve wages and reduce inequality. We study the local and aggregate effects of collective bargaining in Italy and Germany. The two countries have similar geographical differences in firm...

Hosting the Olympic Games costs billions of taxpayer dollars. Following a quasi- experimental setting, this paper assesses the intangible impact of the London 2012 Olympics, using a novel panel of 26,000 residents in London, Paris, and Berlin during the summers of 2011, 2012, and 2013. We show...

To study whether current spending levels and public knowledge of them contribute to transatlantic differences in policy preferences, we implement parallel survey experiments in Germany and the United States. In both countries, support for increased education spending and teacher salaries falls...

China launched a new rural pension scheme (hereafter NRPS) for rural residents in 2009, now covering almost all counties with over 400 million people enrolled. This implementation of the largest social pension program in the world offers a unique setting for studying the economics of...

We study the returns to apprenticeship and vocational training for three early labor market outcomes all measured at age 25 for East and West German youths: non-employment (i.e., unemployment or out of the labor force), permanent fulltime employment, and wages. We find strong positive effects of...