DOES SIZE MATTER? THE IMPACT OF CHANGES IN HOUSEHOLD STRUCTURE ON INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN GERMANY

Income inequality in Germany has been continually increasing during the past 20 years. One cause of this development, among others, could be structural shifts in household formation due to long‐term societal trends. These affect per capita incomes, which has repercussions for the income distribution even if wages remain constant. The aim of this paper is to quantify the proportion of changing household structures in the increase in inequality. We find that the growth of the income gap in Germany (for both East and West from 1991 to 2007) is indeed strongly related to changes in household structure and employment behavior, and a large part of this increase is compensated by the welfare state.     

Do Corporate Governance Analysts Matter? Evidence from the Expansion of Governance Analyst Coverage

T his paper examines the economic consequences of the initiation of governance analyst coverage. Governance analysts process, enhance, and disseminate governance‐related information to capital market participants via, for example, governance reports and ratings. Using an exogenous shock in the United Kingdom, I find that an increase in governance analyst coverage results in increased governance quality, improved liquidity, increased financial analyst following, and improved investor breadth. These findings are consistent with governance analysts creating value for firms via monitoring, information dissemination/production, and investor recognition.     

ON THE CONCEPT OF GREEN NATIONAL INCOME

The present paper generalizes the Weitzman/Hartwick approachto national income accounting. We first establish a close generalrelation between the current value Hamiltonian of an optimalcontrol problem and the optimal value of the objective integralif the time argument does not enter the constraints and entersthe objective function only as a discount factor. This resultis applied to a simple economic model covering most models foundin the literature on national income accounting involving pollutionand non-renewable resources. We critically review the usefulnessof net national product as a welfare indicator and as an indicatorfor sustainability.