Alternative Tax-Benefit Strategies to Support Children in the European Union. Recent Reforms in Austria, Spain and the UK

We compare three EU countries that have recently experienced substantial but very different reforms of their family support systems: Austria, Spain and the UK. The structure of these systems is different: Austria emphases universal benefits, Spain tax concessions and the UK means-tested benefits. First the paper compares the distributional implications of these three approaches. The recent reforms have reinforced existing structures while increasing the amount of spending for children. The second step is to ask: What would have happened if these countries had transformed the architecture of their systems in either of the other two directions? We use EUROMOD, the European tax-benefit microsimulation model that is designed for making cross-country comparisons and answering “what if” questions such as these. We find that the three factors that can be distinguished – the level of spending, its structure, and the way it impacts in a national context – are all important to varying degrees.Children, European Union, Policy Reform, Microsimulation

Von Leben und Arbeit eines deutschen Erziehers

[Hermann Lietz. Hrsg. von Erich Meißner

Gender Disparities in Science? Dropout, Productivity, Collaborations and Success of Male and Female Computer Scientists

Scientific collaborations shape ideas as well as innovations and are both the substrate for, and the outcome of, academic careers. Recent studies show that gender inequality is still present in many scientific practices ranging from hiring to peer-review processes and grant applications. In this work, we investigate gender-specific differences in collaboration patterns of more than one million computer scientists over the course of 47 years. We explore how these patterns change over years and career ages and how they impact scientific success. Our results highlight that successful male and female scientists reveal the same collaboration patterns: compared to scientists in the same career age, they tend to collaborate with more colleagues than other scientists, seek innovations as brokers and establish longer-lasting and more repetitive collaborations. However, women are on average less likely to adapt the collaboration patterns that are related with success, more likely to embed into ego networks devoid of structural holes, and they exhibit stronger gender homophily as well as a consistently higher dropout rate than men in all career ages

Effects Of Changes In Tax/Benefit Policies In Austria 1998 2005

The aim of this paper is to evaluate whether policy reforms in Austria between 1998 and 2005 were successful in meeting redistributive objectives and in reducing poverty. For the analysis we use the tax/benefit micro-simulation model EUROMOD. Due to the sequence of reforms and the use of two datasets, the period under review is split into two parts: 1998 to 2003 and 2003 to 2005. Important changes in the first period were the tax reform 2000, the introduction of the universal childcare benefit (ìKinderbetreuungsgeldî) as well as increases in family-targeted benefits and tax reliefs. We find that the policy reforms were in general clearly progressive and family-friendly. However, as with elderly people, the situation did not improve for all population groups at risk of poverty. In the period from 2003 to 2005 the tax reform 2004/05 was introduced and contributions to health insurance were raised. We find that the measures had no significant impact on poverty and income distribution; however, in total they increased the disposable income for almost all population groups. The analysis is completed by the assessment of the redistributive impact of two hypothetical policy changes in favour of lower income groups, namely the continuous introduction of employeesí social security contributions above the lower threshold for contributions (ìGeringf¸gigkeitsgrenzeî) and the yearly indexation of family benefits.inequality, redistribution, Austria, policy reform, micro-simulation

When Politicians Talk: Assessing Online Conversational Practices of Political Parties on Twitter

Assessing political conversations in social media requires a deeper understanding of the underlying practices and styles that drive these conversations. In this paper, we present a computational approach for assessing online conversational practices of political parties. Following a deductive approach, we devise a number of quantitative measures from a discussion of theoretical constructs in sociological theory. The resulting measures make different - mostly qualitative - aspects of online conversational practices amenable to computation. We evaluate our computational approach by applying it in a case study. In particular, we study online conversational practices of German politicians on Twitter during the German federal election 2013. We find that political parties share some interesting patterns of behavior, but also exhibit some unique and interesting idiosyncrasies. Our work sheds light on (i) how complex cultural phenomena such as online conversational practices are amenable to quantification and (ii) the way social media such as Twitter are utilized by political parties.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, Proc. 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2014

Lessons from building and using EUROMOD

By the mid 1990s the potential and usefulness of microsimulation models for researching tax benefit systems had found widespread acceptance. Nevertheless models were not widely available for independent or academic research in all countries of the European Union (EU). Even more important, carrying out consistent comparative tax-benefit microsimulation analysis was still an apparently impossible task. The time seemed ready for a European-Union-wide tax-benefit microsimulation model. This paper is devoted to explaining the reasons for building EUROMOD, its added value compared to existing models, the trade-offs faced by its builders and lessons that have been learnt from developing such an integrated model. Moreover, it aims to provide an insight into the wide range of possible applications of EUROMOD, underlined by summarising some indicative findings of studies, which have used the model

Why Are Mothers Working Longer Hours in Austria than in Germany?: A Comparative Micro Simulation Analysis

Labor force participation rates of mothers in Austria and Germany are similar, however full-time employment rates are much higher among Austrian mothers. In order to find out to what extent these differences can be attributed to differences in the tax transfersystem, we perform a comparative micro simulation exercise. After estimating structural labor supply models of both countries, we interchange two important institutional characteristics of the two countries, namely (i) the definition of the tax unit within the personal income tax and (ii) the parental leave benefit scheme. As our analysis shows, differences in mothers' employment patterns can partly be explained by the different tax systems: While Germany has a system of joint taxation with income splitting for married couples, Austria taxes everyone individually, which leads to lower marginal tax rates for secondary earners than the German system.Labor supply, micro simulation, family policy, income taxation, Austria, Germany

The impact of tax and transfer systems on children in the European Union

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of fiscal policy on the economic resources available to children, and on the child poverty rate. A static microsimulation model specifically designed for the purposes of comparative fiscal analysis in the European Union, EUROMOD, is used to study the age incidence of government taxes and transfers in 2001 in 15 EU countries. Three related questions are addressed. First, what priorities are currently embodied in government budgets across age groups, and in particular to what degree do cash transfer and tax systems benefit children relative to older groups? Second, what fractions of the needs of children are supported by elements of the tax and transfer systems directed explicitly to them? And third, what impact do measures of public resources for children have on child poverty rates

Sonderwirtschaftszonen in Entwicklungsländern: Verringerung von Migrationsursachen?

In jüngster Zeit geäußerte Vorschläge, unter anderem von George Soros, sehen vor, die Flüchtlingskrise durch die Einrichtung von Sonderwirtschaftszonen in den Anrainerstaaten der Herkunftsländer der Migranten zu entschärfen. Würden dort Investitionen getätigt und Arbeitsplätze geschaffen, gäbe es weniger Anreize, nach Europa einzuwandern. Sind diese Vorschläge wirklich geeignet, die Migrationsursachen zu verringern? Nach Ansicht von Birgit Schmitz und Benjamin Schraven, Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, Bonn, muss diese Frage grundsätzlich mit einem »Nein« beantwortet werden. Sonderwirtschaftszonen könnten eine enorme landesinterne Migration auslösen, diese führe aber nicht unbedingt zu weniger internationaler Migration. Die Erwartungen, dass Sonderwirtschaftszonen in Europas Nachbarschaft kurz- oder mittelfristig zu einer massiven Abnahme der Zuwanderung in den alten Kontinent führen würde, sollten also nicht allzu hoch gehängt werden. Grundsätzlich werde Europa nicht daran vorbeikommen, sich über eine gut gemanagte Zuwanderungspolitik Gedanken zu machen. Marco Lietz, sieht einen Lösungsansatz im Einsatz ausländischer Experten in Sonderwirtschaftszonen, da Fachleute aus Europa, Nordamerika, Australien oder Ostasien häufig über Know-how zur Verwaltung von Gewerbezonen oder Städten nach modernen Kriterien verfügen. Auf diese Weise könne eine erfolgreiche Standortpolitik zur Armutsreduzierung und damit zur Verringerung von Migration beitragen. So sei es beispielsweise für ausländische Experten bedeutend einfacher, mit Investoren aus Industrieländern zu verhandeln und sie davon zu überzeugen, ihr Unternehmen an einem bestimmten Standort anzusiedeln und so die dringend benötigten Arbeitsplätze zu schaffen