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German Economic Review

Sprache: Englisch

Erstveröffentlichung: 1. Januar 2000

Erscheinungsweise: 4 Hefte pro Jahr

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Über diese Zeitschrift

Mit Beginn des Jahres 2025 erscheint die German Economic Review im Open Access. Alle Artikel erscheinen ohne Zeitverzug unter der Creative Commons-Lizenz CC-BY 4.0. Für die Autorinnen und Autoren entstehen keine Publikationskosten.

Die ZBW – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft unterstützt den Verein für Socialpolitik bei der Open-Access-Transformation der Zeitschriften German Economic Review und Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, die in Zusammenarbeit mit De Gruyter nach dem Subscribe-to-Open-Modell durchgeführt wird.

German Economic Review (GER), the official publication of the German Economic Association (Verein für Socialpolitik), is an international journal publishing original and rigorous research of general interest in a broad range of economic disciplines, including:

macro- and microeconomics
economic policy
international economics
public economics
finance
business administration

The scope of research approaches includes theoretical, empirical and experimental work. Innovative and thought-provoking contributions, in particular from younger authors, are especially welcome. GER is edited by an international board of editors and associate editors from Europe and overseas. This ensures access to an international pool of referees and guarantees a high intellectual standard of published contributions. Editors are committed to a prompt turnaround of submissions.

Aims and Scope

German Economic Review publishes original research of general interest in a broad range of economic discplines, including macro- and microeconomics, public economics, business administration and finance. Authors are invited to submit papers devoted to policy analysis as well as theoretical and empirical papers. All submissions are refereed. The journal's internationally composed board of editors is committed to maintaining a high standard of quality.

As the official journal of the Verein für Socialpolitik (German Economic Association), German Economic Review is provided to all the members of the association. At the same time, the journal aims at a wider international audience and invites participation and subscriptions from economists around the world.

GER is published four times a year, in English, and is available online.
Sets of data used are available at the German Economic Review Data Archive under http://journaldata.zbw.eu/journals/ger.

150 Jahre „Verein für Socialpolitik"

De Gruyter gratuliert dem „Verein für Socialpolitik" zum 150-jährigen Jubiläum!

Ihre Vorteile

German Economic Review präsentiert im Folgenden die Editor’s Choice – Beiträge mit unbeschränktem Zugang:

Vol. 22, Iss. 2: Do political parties matter? Evidence from German municipalities von Nadine Riedel, Martin Simmler und Christian Wittrock

Vol. 22, Iss. 2: In-group, out-group effects in distributional preferences: the case of gender von Tarek Jaber-Lopez, Alexandra Baier und Brent J. Davis

Vol. 22, Iss. 1: Survival of altruistic gatekeepers: Kickbacks in medical markets von Erwin Amann und Stefan Felder

Vol. 21, Iss. 4: Does retail trading matter to price discovery? von Tao Chen

Vol. 21, Iss. 3: Real estate data for Germany (RWI-GEO-RED) von Philipp Breidenbach und Sandra Schaffner

Vol. 21, Iss. 2: Projecting the spread of COVID-19 for Germany von Jean Roch Donsimoni, René Glawion, Bodo Plachter und Klaus Wälde

Vol. 21, Iss. 1: Different counselors, many options: Career guidance and career plans in secondary schools von Bernd Fitzenberger, Annette Hillerich-Sigg und Maresa Sprietsma

Ihre Vorteile

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Inhalte richten sich an die Wissenschaft sowie an Nicht-Spezialisten
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Geschichte

From 2020 on, the journal German Economic Review is published by De Gruyter.

Verein für Socialpolitik

The Verein für Socialpolitik is a non-profit organization. Members enjoy a reduced participation fee for attending the Verein’s annual conference. Membership includes a subscription to both journals of the association, German Economic Review and Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik.

For further information please visit the website.

Verein für Socialpolitik
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Monopsonistic Labour Markets

15. September 2025

Hartmut Egger, Boris Hirsch

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Open Access
Are Taxes or User-Fees More Popular Among Politicians? The Case of Childcare

14. Juli 2025

Friedrich Breyer, Maj-Britt Sterba

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How shall publicly provided excludable goods be financed – by general taxation or user fees? The general conclusion of the existing literature is that exclusive tax financing is neither efficient nor desirable under widely shared distributive goals. A striking example is childcare because here fees are often made dependent on parents’ income. Given the rather clear arguments in favor of user fees for formal childcare, it is surprising to notice that some German states with leftist governments have abolished user fees and replaced them with pure tax financing. It is the purpose of this research to investigate the attitudes of politicians towards user fees for publicly funded childcare and to explore the justifications given for these attitudes. We do so by directly surveying members of eight federal state legislatures. The survey results confirm the experience of real political decisions in that left-leaning politicians tend to oppose parental fees. They do so mainly with the justification that “education must be free for all”. Right-leaning politicians tend to support fees for various reasons. We discuss how these results can be reconciled with the redistributive goals of leftist parties.
Open Access
Consumer Consent Regulation

12. Juni 2025

Roland Strausz

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Consumer consent regulation is the cornerstone of modern data privacy regulation such as the European GDPR and the Californian CCPA. By ensuring that consumers can reject any harmful data collection, the regulation seems an effective tool for protecting consumers against price discrimination. By contrast, I provide the insight that consent regulation alone is ineffective because it provides firms with the loophole to commit to unattractive offers to dissenting consumers. Effective consent regulation therefore requires an explicit regulation of the firm’s dissent offer. This is informationally demanding; regulation that merely insists on “reasonable” (sequential rational) offers is ineffective.
Open Access
Labor Market Concentration in Germany

8. April 2025

Michael Oberfichtner, Martin Popp

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Using register data, we document that the average German labor market, defined by hires in combinations of 3-digit occupations, requirement levels, and commuting zones, is highly concentrated ( HHI ̄ $\bar{\text{HHI}}$ =0.257). By EU antitrust thresholds, 56 percent of these labor markets feature moderate or high concentration, covering 9 percent of workers. Concentration remained relatively stable between 2012 and 2023. The labor market delineation strongly affects the measured level of concentration but not its evolution, whereas the choice of the firm size variable has little influence. Concentration differs starkly across occupations and regions, and workers in complex jobs experience the highest levels of concentration.
Open Access
The Immobile Incumbent Problem in a Model of Short-Term Wage-Posting

20. März 2025

Alan Manning

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This paper takes the canonical Burdett-Mortensen model of wage-posting and relaxes the assumption that wages are set once-for-all, instead assuming they can only be committed one period at a time. It derives a closed-form solution for a steady-state Markov Rank-Preserving Equilibrium and shows how this relates to the canonical model and performs some comparative statics on it. But it is shown that a Rank-Preserving Equilibrium may fail to exist because employers have more monopsony power over existing workers than new recruits and that this non-existence can be a problem for plausible parameter values. It is shown how a Rank-Inverting Equilibrium may exist. It is argued that this problem is likely to occur in a wide range of search models.
Open Access
On the Capital Structure of Foreign Subsidiaries: Evidence from Panel Data Quantile Regression Models

1. Januar 2000

Raffaele Miniaci, Paolo M. Panteghini

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This paper investigates how business taxation and profitability affect the capital structure of European subsidiaries controlled by foreign multinational corporations. While traditional financial theories, such as the Pecking Order Theory (POT) and Trade-Off Theory (TOT), offer contrasting predictions – emphasizing, respectively, the irrelevance or centrality of tax factors – neither fully accounts for multinational settings or firm heterogeneity. Using a large panel dataset from Orbis, we analyze 70,160 subsidiaries across 29 countries. To overcome limitations of standard linear panel models, we estimate the Unconditional Quantile Partial Effects ( UQPE ) adjusting for fixed or correlated random effects. Our results show that corporate tax effects are heterogeneous across the leverage distribution. Specifically, subsidiary tax rates positively influence leverage, particularly in the lower deciles of the distribution. Parent company tax rates exhibit an inverse relationship, mainly affecting the lowest deciles of the leverage distribution. Profitability reduces leverage across all quantiles, according to the POT and some TOT models. Additionally, other firm characteristics (e.g. asset structure, liquidity, and firm size) display quantile-specific effects on leverage. Quite importantly, taxes affect companies’ capital structure in heterogeneous ways. With our findings we show that average marginal effects mask substantial heterogeneity. This research contributes to the ongoing tax policy debate by providing empirical evidence that underscores the importance of firm-specific factors and the need for tailored policy approaches in corporate finance. As we show, tax incentives have the strongest impact on the lowest levels of leverage, while the higher levels are much less responsive, probably because of the constraints faced by heavily indebted companies. Policymakers should consider these differential effects to design targeted tax policies that effectively influence corporate financing decisions.
Open Access
Stepping up When Non-resident Parents Fall Short: Stepparents’ Take-up of Financial Responsibility for Stepchildren – Evidence from German Taxpayer Data

1. Januar 2000

Marianna Schaubert, Marc Kerstan

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This article delineates the distinctions between the extant types of stepfamilies in Germany, with a particular focus on the financial responsibility of stepparents towards their minor stepchildren. By revealing the extent to which stepparent households shoulder this responsibility, we simultaneously uncover the inability or unwillingness of non-resident parents to provide financial support for their biological children. The likelihood of a stepfather assuming financial responsibility for his stepchildren – that is, stepping in for a non-resident father – is about 21 percentage points higher than that of stepmothers and 22 percentage points higher than that of stepparents in complex stepfamilies. Furthermore, the results of this study suggest that the likelihood of non-resident fathers providing support is contingent on the number of children in the stepfamily.
Open Access
Regional Climate Policy Analysis in the EU Member Country Germany

1. Januar 2000

Michael Hübler, Marius Braun, Nils Keimes

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This article studies the heterogeneity of European climate policy effects within Germany (Lower Saxony and the rest of Germany) and between other member states of the European Union (EU). It uses a global Eaton and Kortum trade model to examine the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS) with the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) and reveals significant differences in policy effects across EU countries and within Germany. Under a medium CO 2 target, CBAM has a negligible average welfare effect on the entire EU while it can eliminate the carbon leakage caused by the EU ETS. Assuming a less stringent CO 2 target, CBAM creates a welfare gain of the EU, whereas, assuming a more stringent target, it creates a welfare loss compared with the EU ETS alone. More stringent CO 2 targets in the EU ETS increase the effectiveness of CBAM in reducing carbon leakage and hence global emissions. Because official and constructed regional data sets are often incomplete, outdated or not publicly available and their compilation and resolution are not standardized, the official public provision of a comprehensive, harmonized, up-to-date regional data set, at least with federal state level resolution, is advisable.
Open Access
Dividend Policy: An Empirical Analysis for Imperial Germany

1. Januar 2000

Carsten Burhop, Felix Selgert

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In the German Empire, corporations almost always paid a dividend to their shareholders. Dividends have been cut or increased in line with the development of profits. We demonstrate that the target dividend and the average dividend tended to be nearly the same. If the dividend paid deviated from the target, we measure an extraordinarily fast return towards the target. Our analysis of the change in dividends, the payout ratio, and the dynamics of the dividend level provides evidence in favour of the agency theory of dividend policy. Companies with good investment opportunities paid comparatively high dividends. An improvement in shareholder protection weakened this effect. Best practice voting rights at the company level have systematically influenced dividend levels, the relevance of investment opportunities for the dividend policy and the speed of adjustment after a deviation from the target.
Open Access
Consumption Expenditures in Austria & Germany: New Evidence based on Transactional Data

1. Januar 2000

Winfried Koeniger, Peter Kreß, Jonas Lehmann

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We analyze the novel transactional card expenditure data for Germany and Austria provided by Fable Data. We describe key features of the data in terms of the coverage of expenditure items, payment channels, and the distribution of expenditures across regions and time. We highlight strengths and limitations of the data, comparing them to representative but more consolidated lower-frequency information from external data sources. We find very similar expenditure patterns in Germany and Austria. We illustrate the granular, higher-frequency information across expenditure items and locations, analyzing weekday spending patterns and the evolution of consumption expenditures during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.
Open Access
Monopsony: Wages, Wage Bargaining and Job Requirements

1. Januar 2000

Jasmin Anderlik, Malika Jumaniyozova, Bernhard Schmidpeter, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer

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Using linked vacancy-employer-employee data from Austria, we investigate how monopsony power affects firms’ posting behavior and wage negotiations. Consistent with theoretical predictions, we find that firms with greater monopsony power post lower wages and offer fewer non-wage amenities, suggesting that wages and non-wage benefits are complementary. However, we find no evidence that monopsonistic firms demand higher levels of skill or education. Instead, our results indicate that they require more basic skills, particularly those related to routine tasks. On the workers’ side, we find that employees hired in monopsonistic labor markets face significantly lower wages, both initially and in the long run. These lower wages are driven by both lower posted wages and reduced bargaining power, as well as reduced opportunities to climb the wage ladder later.
Open Access
The Covid-19 Recession in Germany: A Macro-Epidemiological Analysis

1. Januar 2000

Willi Krause, Luís F. Costa, João Ricardo Costa Filho

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What is the contribution of containment policies to output fluctuations in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic? We extend a macro-epidemiological model based on the evidence that efficiency and labor wedges are the key distortions in the neoclassical growth model that account for the GDP dynamics during the period. We find that the consumption and labor-supply effects of containment policies and the endogenous responses of households to pandemic-associated health risks can account for almost all weekly dynamics of output in Germany between the first quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2021. The containment policies are found to be responsible for especially large output losses during the pandemic, but the endogenous household responses appear to play an important complementary role. We simulate a counterfactual, laissez-faire type of response to the pandemic and find that not only would it not have avoided a sizeable recession either, but it would also lead to substantially higher losses in human life and stress on the German health service.

Journal Impact Factor	1.4	2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025)
5-year Journal Impact Factor	1.2	2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025)
Journal Citation Indicator	0.38	2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025)
CiteScore	2.1	2024, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2025)
SCImago Journal Rank	0.378	2024, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2025; Data Source: Scopus)
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	0.557	2024, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2025; Data Source: Scopus)

German Economic Review

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