Topic Inequality

Livestream: Social Mobility as a Key to Success for Economic Transformation and Reform

Social mobility and equal opportunity are key to thriving societies and economies. In the aftermath of the pandemic and in the context of increasing prices, calls for policymakers to address social and economic inequalities are intensifying. The recently launched Observatory on Social Mobility and Equal Opportunity not only brings together all OECD data points, but also displays the impact of...

The Price of Natural Gas Dependency: Price Shocks, Inequality, and Public Policy

The 2022 natural gas price spikes across Europe raised concerns regarding their distributional consequences. This paper investigates the distributional effect of price increases between and, in particular, within different income groups in Germany, accounting for different determinants of gas expenditures. The study finds that low-income households are affected the most by the gas price increase. Low-income ...

The Role of Carbon Pricing in Promoting Material Recycling: A Model of Multi-Market Interactions

Recycling of raw material can make a significant contribution to achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Carbon pricing can encourage material recycling by making it more competitive with waste incineration and primary material production. However, accounting for the interactions among different markets in a theoretical model, this paper finds that carbon pricing on material manufacturing alone does ...

A Tale of Two Data Sets: Comparing German Administrative and Survey Data Using Wage Inequality as an Example

The IAB’s Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) are the two data sets most commonly used to analyze wage inequality in Germany. While the SIAB is based on administrative reports by employers to the social security system, the SOEP is a survey data set in which respondents self-report their wages. Both data sources have their specific advantages and ...

Gender Care Gap and Gender Pay Gap Increase Substantially until Middle Age

While the gender pay gap between men and women in Germany remains at 18 percent, this figure is not the same for all employees. There are, for example, major differences by age. Beginning at age 30, the gender pay gap increases sharply and remains constantly high at 20 percent until retirement. Closely related to this is the gender care gap, the difference in unpaid care work between women and men. ...

Basic Income - From Vision to Creeping Transformation of the Welfare State

Midijob Reform: Increased Redistribution in Pension Insurance – Noticeable Costs, Relief Not Well Targeted

The German Federal Government has expanded subsidies for employees with low gross wages (midijob employees) as of January 1, 2023, and raised the upper earnings limit to 2,000 euros. As a result, around 6.2 million midijob employees will benefit from paying reduced social security contributions while still receiving their full pension entitlements, made possible by a redistribution within the social ...

Rent Price Control – Yet Another Great Equalizer of Economic Inequalities? Evidence from a Century of Historical Data

The long-run U-shaped patterns of economic inequality are standardly explained by basic economic trends (Piketty’s r > g), taxation policies or ‘great levellers’ such as catastrophes. This article argues that housing policy, and particularly rent control, is a neglected explanatory factor in understanding macro inequality. We hypothesize that rent control could decrease overall housing wealth, lower ...

Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Performance of Start-Ups

Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the influence of the task-related construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we take a different perspective and ...

Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Performance of Start-Ups

Self-efficacy reflects the self-belief that one can persistently perform difficult and novel tasks while coping with adversity. As such beliefs reflect how individuals behave, think, and act, they are key for successful entrepreneurial activities. While existing literature mainly analyzes the influence of the task-related construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, we take a different perspective and ...