This paper discusses how an industrialized country could defend the wages and social benefits of its unskilled workers against wage competition from immigrants. It shows that fixing social standards harms the workers and that fixing social replacement incomes implies migration into unemployment....

It is argued that a PAYGO system may have useful allocative functions in that it serves as an insurance against not having children and as an enforcement device for rotten kid' who are unwilling to pay their parents a pension. It is true that the system has amoral hazard effect in terms of...

Contrary to a frequent contention, systems competition cannot work when governments respect the Subsidiarity Principle. The principle implies that governments step in where markets fail. Reintroducing markets through the back door of systems competition will again result in market failure. Three...

It is shown that the net fiscal externality created by an additional member of a pay-as-you-go pension system that is endowed with individual accounts equals the gross contributions" of this member. In Germany, this is an amount of about DM 175,000. The paper uses this" information to design a...

Deutschland und Europa befinden sich derzeit in einer Energiekrise, in der steigende Preise vor allem für Gas und Strom private Haushalte und Unternehmen erheblich belasten. Kurzfristig zielen die politischen Maßnahmen darauf ab, eine Gasmangellage zu vermeiden und die Verbraucher*innen zu...

Roland Berger, Clemens Fuest, Hans-Werner Sinn, Christoph Theis und Peter-Alexander Wacker stellen ihre Vorschläge für eine neue Strategie in der Energiepolitik vor, die beim Jahrestreffen der Gesellschaft zur Förderung der wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Forschung (Freunde des ifo Instituts)...