Publications of the Research Group Inequality and Public Policy

  1. Discussion and Working Paper // 2020

    Gender diversity in corporate boards: Evidence from quota-implied discontinuities

    We use data across European corporate boards to investigate the effects of quota-induced female representation, under minimal possible identification assumptions. We find that having more women in board…

  2. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 20-033 // 2020

    Unemployment Benefit Duration and Startup Success

    Despite the importance of business creation for the economy and a relevant share of new firms being started out of unemployment, most research has focused on analyzing the effect of unemployment insurance (UI)…

  3. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 20-028 // 2020

    Austerity and Distributional Policy

    What are the effects of austerity on distributional policy? We exploit the autonomy of Italian municipalities in setting non-linear income taxes and the exogenous introduction of a fiscal rule to show that…

  4. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 20-023 // 2020

    Social Capital and the Spread of Covid-19: Insights From European Countries

    We explore the role of social capital in the spread of the recent Covid-19 pan­demic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Swe­den, Switzerland and the UK. We exploit…

  5. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 20-022 // 2020

    Higher-Order Income Risk over the Business Cycle

    We extend the canonical income process with persistent and transitory risk to shock distributions with left-skewness and excess kurtosis, to which we refer as higher-order risk. We estimate our extended income…

  6. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 20-017 // 2020

    On Event Studies and Distributed-Lags in Two-Way Fixed Effects Models: Identification, Equivalence, and Generalization

    We discuss important properties and pitfalls of panel-data event study designs. We derive three main results. First, binning of effect window endpoints is a practical necessity and key for identification of…

  7. ZEW Discussion Paper No. 20-016 // 2020

    Fiscal and Individual Rates of Return to University Education With and Without Graduation

    Based on a detailed model of the German tax-benefit system, this paper simulates private and fiscal returns to education for college graduates and college dropouts. Completing a five-year college degree is found…

  8. Refereed Journal // 2020

    The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

    We investigate the long-run effects of government surveillance on civic capital and economic performance, studying the case of the Stasi in East Germany. Exploiting regional variation in the number of spies and…