On March 12 the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy will release its first major policy study on “The distribution of wealth in Germany, 1895 to 2018”. ECONtribute professor Moritz Schularick will exclusively handover the study to Olaf Scholz, German Vice-Chancellor and Federal Minister of Finance, at a high-level conference at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin.

The study presents first long run evidence on the distribution of wealth in Germany from the period of industrialization until the present day, 1895 to 2018. It provides novel evidence and an encompassing picture of wealth inequality across the entire German population by combining wealth tax data, household balance sheets, survey data and wealth rankings. The study highlights important, policy-relevant aspects of the recent development of wealth inequality in Germany.

The Federal Minister of Finance, Olaf Scholz, will discuss the political implications of these novel findings. Prof. Thomas Piketty from the Paris School of Economics will discuss the results from an international perspective.

The study “The distribution of wealth in Germany, 1895 to 2018” by Moritz Schularick (ECONtribute, University of Bonn), Thilo Albers (HU Berlin) and Charlotte Bartels (DIW Berlin) will be available on March 12 on this website.