Abstract: "This study identifies the causal effect of pension generosity on women's fertility behavior. It capitalizes on Brazil's expansion of the pension system to rural workers, whose pension wealth subsequently more than tripled. Difference-in-differences, instrumental variable and event study methods show that the pension reform reduces the propensity of childbearing of women in fertile age by 8% in the short-run. Completed fertility declines by 1.3 children within 20 years after the reform, reducing the contribution base of the Pay-As-You-Go pension system in the long-run. The fertility response is strongest at higher birth parities, among older women and among mothers with sons."

Link to latest paper version.  

Online appendix. Replication code.

Older versions: IZA Discussion Paper 13048, 2020. CESifo Working Paper No. 8173, 2020. BGPE Discussion Paper 192, 2020.

Abstract: "With (automatic) exchange of tax information among countries now common, tax evaders have had to find new ways to hide their offshore holdings. One such way are citizenship-by-investment programs, which offer foreigners a new passport for a local investment or a fixed fee. We show analytically that high-income individuals acquire a new citizenship to lower the probability that their tax evasion is detected through information exchange. Using data on cross-border bank deposits, we find that deposits in tax havens increase after a country starts offering a citizenship-by-investment program, providing indirect evidence that tax evaders use these programs."

Link to latest paper version. 

Guest articles: Süddeutsche Zeitung. Austaxpolicy Blog. Ökonomenstimme.

Media coverage: Tagesspiegel

Older versions: CESifo Working Paper 8956, 2021. BGPE Discussion Paper 204, 2021.

Abstract: "The research on wealth inequality has generally focused on real and financial assets, while giving little attention to pension wealth: the present value of future pension entitlements from public and company pension schemes. This is surprising given the important role pension plans play in guaranteeing material security and well-being for a majority of the population, and suggests that they should be accounted for in peoples’ wealth portfolios. Using novel data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we study the incidence, relevance, and distribution of individual pension wealth, net worth, and augmented wealth (the sum of the two) in Germany. Further, we investigate age-wealth profiles and differences between East and West Germany."

Link to latest paper version. 

Online appendix 1. Online appendix 2. 

Media coverage: Frankfurter Allgemeine Woche. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 

Older versions: SOEPpapers 853, 2016.

Abstract: "This paper studies whether U.S. defense and security aid is systematically diverted by recipient-country elites into offshore bank accounts. I combine project-level data on U.S. defense and security aid disbursements from 2013-2018 with bilateral crossborder bank deposit data from the Bank for International Settlements. Exploiting within-country variation, I find that deposits held in high-secrecy offshore jurisdictions increase in quarters with U.S. defense and security aid disbursements, while deposits in other international financial centers do not. However, this relationship is not broad-based across recipient countries. Instead, it is driven by a small number of countries receiving exceptionally large aid disbursements and by quarters in which aid exceeds high thresholds relative to GDP. In contrast, U.S. economic and development aid is not associated with comparable offshore deposit dynamics. The findings suggest that while elite capture can occur in high-intensity settings, diversion of U.S. defense and security aid is not a structural phenomenon."

This  larger research program studies the political economy and economic consequences of electricity scarcity in South Africa. It builds on a high-resolution administrative outage dataset and brings together empirical analyses of distributive politics in public goods provision, the fiscal and institutional consequences of unreliable public service provision, and the socioeconomic effects of intermittent access to basic infrastructure and services. It examines the politically motivated allocation of electricity under conditions of severe scarcity, how outages affect institutional trust, tax compliance, and fiscal capacity, and the causal effects of unreliable access on labor market outcomes, income, education, and health, as well as broader patterns of inequality.

Political Allocation of Electricity (with A. M. Danzer): This strand studies whether political incentives shape the allocation of load shedding, including whether constituencies receive preferential treatment in closely contested elections or in areas linked to political leaders.

Fiscal and Institutional Consequences (with A. Duodu): This strand examines whether electricity scarcity, as a visible failure of public service provision, weakens institutional trust, tax compliance, municipal revenues, and local fiscal capacity.

Socioeconomic Effects of Electricity Instability (with T. Köhler und N. Domenz): This strand studies how frequent and prolonged load shedding affects labor market outcomes and income, with planned extensions to education, health, crime, and inequality. 

This project studies how age-specific income taxation affects labor supply and retirement behavior in South Africa. The project exploits a 2012 reform that substantially increased age-specific tax exemptions for older individuals, generating quasi-experimental variation in incentives to work at older ages. This setting provides a unique opportunity to study how tax policy shapes labor supply decisions at the extensive and intensive margins, as well as retirement timing. The analysis uses linked employer–employee data derived from administrative tax records (National Treasury–SARS), combined with labor force surveys, to track individual earnings, employment, and retirement transitions over time. This allows me to quantify how individuals adjust labor supply and retirement behavior in response to changes in net-of-tax wages induced by the reform and to assess the implications for household resources and inequality.

This project explores how cultural beliefs and identities shape sustainable behavior and environmental policy preferences. The project studies how culturally embedded conceptions of the self in relation to nature help explain variation in environmental attitudes and behavior across and within countries. The empirical approach combines macro- and micro-level evidence, using international surveys such as the World Values Survey and European Values Study, as well as quasi-experimental variation from migration patterns and natural cultural boundaries, including Switzerland’s linguistic divide.