https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/18845 2026-04-28T20:10:54Z 2026-04-28T20:10:54Z Eichfelder, Sebastian Lau, Mona https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19885 2020-01-31T16:27:10Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Capitalization of capital gains taxes Eichfelder, Sebastian; Lau, Mona We argue that the tax capitalization effect is a function of the attention of market participants. Market reactions can therefore be driven not only by the announcement dates of tax events but also by factors influencing the dissemination of tax information, such as deadlines and media reports. Analyzing the introduction date of the earlier-announced German capital gains tax reform of 2009 by triple-difference estimation, we find evidence of a delayed market reaction long after the announcement date. Within the last two (five) trading days before the deadline, we observe a sharp increase in abnormal trading volumes of 151.7% (104.0%). The aggregate abnormal return of the German capital market in the last five trading days in 2008 was 10.6%. Furthermore, we find a significant and positive correlation between trading volumes and measures for awareness of the upcoming tax reform (Google searches and media reports).

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Bönke, Timm Werdt, Clive https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19837 2021-08-19T06:02:12Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Charitable giving and its persistent and transitory reactions to changes in tax incentives Bönke, Timm; Werdt, Clive We estimate the elasticity of charitable giving with respect to price and income changes using a rich panel of income tax returns covering the period 2001 to 2006. Employing censored quantile regression and exploiting the panel structure, the advantage of our analysis is twofold: First, we derive results for different points in the underlying distribution of charitable giving and allow for giving to be heterogeneous. Thus, we do not only estimate responses of giving to prices and incomes but also where the incentives matter most. Second, we disentangle long-run responses to persistent changes in price and income from temporary reactions, consumption smoothing, or tax planning. Indeed, our results suggest that price elasticity is heterogenous across the distribution of donors and that the persistent price elasticity is close to one in absolute value at the upper and lower tail of the distribution of charitable giving.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Heller, C.-Philipp Johnen, Johannes Schmitz, Sebastian https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/20061 2021-08-19T06:01:56Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Congestion pricing Heller, C.-Philipp; Johnen, Johannes; Schmitz, Sebastian We study road congestion as a mechanism design problem. In our basic model we analyze the allocation of a set of drivers among two roads, one of which may be congested. An additional driver on the congestible road imposes an externality on the other drivers by increasing their travel time. Each driver is privately informed about her value of time and asked to report that value to the mechanism designer, who assigns drivers to roads. With a finite number of drivers, there is aggregate uncertainty and the efficient allocation is ex ante unknown. Setting a single Pigouvian price is then not optimal. However, the efficient allocation is implementable by a Vickrey-Clarke-Groves price schedule that lets each driver pay the externality she imposes on other drivers. This allows drivers to pay to have other drivers use the slow road instead of the congestible road. As the number of drivers becomes large, there is a single optimal Pigouvian price that leads to an efficient allocation. However, finding this price requires the mechanism designer to either know the precise distribution of the value of time or the use of our mechanism. We analyze some extensions and apply our model to various congestion problems arising in other contexts.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z Corneo, Giacomo Schröder, Carsten König, Johannes https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/20082 2021-08-19T06:02:29Z 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z

Distributional Effects of Subsidizing Retirement Savings Accounts Corneo, Giacomo; Schröder, Carsten; König, Johannes We empirically investigate the distributional consequences of the Riester scheme, the main private pension subsidization program in Germany. We find that 38% of the aggregate subsidy accrues to the top two deciles of the population, but only 7.3% to the bottom two. Nonetheless the Riester scheme is almost distributionally neutral when looking at standard inequality measures. This is due to two offsetting effects: a progressive one stemming from the subsidy schedule and a regressive one from voluntary participation. Regressions of the participation decision suggest that a high level of household wealth significantly increases the probability of benefiting from the Riester scheme.

2015-01-01T00:00:00Z