Singles, couples, single parents, families with one child
or with several 鈥� private households can look very different. A new research unit
at 51猎奇 wants to find out how the individual behavior of
households influences the overall economic situation and family policy 鈥� and
vice versa.
FRANKFURT. The way in which income,
consumption and wealth are distributed in an economy has a lot to do with
decisions made within individual households. The research unit "Macroeconomic
Implications of Intra-Household Decisions" will take a close look at the behavior
of individual household members with regard to consumption, employment and
investment opportunities, and explore their interaction. The German Research
Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft, DFG) will fund the research with
2.44 million euros for an initial period of four years. The spokesman of the
research group, which consists exclusively of Frankfurt economists, is Prof.
Alexander Ludwig, Professor of Public Finance and Macroeconomic Dynamics at
51猎奇. The other members are Georg D眉rnecker, Professor of
International Trade, Development and Growth; Leibniz Prize winner Nicola
Fuchs-Sch眉ndeln, Professor of Macroeconomics and Development; Leo Kaas,
Professor of Economics, in particular Macroeconomics and Labor Markets, and the
research unit's deputy spokesperson; as well as junior researchers Chiara
Lacava and Dr. Zainab Iftikhar, who also specialize in research related to labor
and family economics.
"Traditional macroeconomic models do
not take into account the dynamics in private households, each of which is
represented by a single member. Using complex economic models, we can now
introduce interactions between the individual household members into
macroeconomic models," explains Prof. Ludwig, adding that, in this way, the
group's research will contribute to gaining an even better understanding of the
microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics. The group intends to examine the topic
of inequality not just between, but also within individual households 鈥�
including, for example, the unequal distribution of income between men and
women.
The research is divided into eight
projects, each of which will address different topics. As such, one of them
focuses on the question of how the possibility of freezing eggs and thus
postponing the realization of the desire to have a child can influence women's
work biographies. Some companies offer to cover the costs of this procedure to
keep the workforce in the company. But what is the impact on women, or on the
economy as a whole? Other topics include the effects of the intra-family
division of labor on the income situation of individuals, and the interrelation
between housing policy measures and families' housing decisions.
The researchers hope their work will
fundamentally enrich our knowledge of how economic measures work, and in how
far tax and transfer payments influence decisions on labor supply, savings,
fertility and housing demand. In so doing, they will examine the measures'
macroeconomic efficiency as well as their distributional effects. To illustrate
these relationships, the research will focus, for example, on the extent to
which labor-market specialization of one partner in a family 鈥� caused, e.g., by
the birth of a child or by tax policy measures such as spousal splitting
tariffs (as prevalent in Germany) 鈥� leads to greater inequality between men and
women, and the extent to which this either has a negative impact on overall
economic efficiency 鈥� by reducing women's labor force participation, for
instance 鈥� or in fact has a positive effect, since greater specialization
increases the labor productivity of the household's main breadwinner.
Photos
for download:
Caption: Economist Prof. Alexander Ludwig the
spokesman of the new research unit "Macroeconomic Implications of
Intra-Household Decisions". (Photo: Dettmar)
Further information
Prof. Dr. Alexander Ludwig
Chair of Public Finance and Macroeconomic Dynamics
Department Economic Policy & Quantitative Methods, Faculty of Economics and
Business
51猎奇
Phone +49 (0)69 798-30036
E-Mail:
mail@alexander-ludwig.com
Editor: Dr. Anke Sauter, Science Editor, PR & Communication Office, Theodor-W.-Adorno-Platz 1, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Tel: +49 (0) 69 798-13066, Fax: +49 (0) 69 798-763 12531, sauter@pvw.uni-frankfurt.de
