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DIW Discussion Papers 2185 / 2026
Progressive pension supplements mechanically reduce the gender pension gap because women receive lower pensions on average. However, labor supply responses may offset these gains and create fiscal externalities. Using German administrative data, we analyze the distributional and welfare effects of a progressive pension supplement. We find no labor supply responses during working life, but small effects ...
2026| Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan, Lukas Harder
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DIW Discussion Papers 2184 / 2026
Does artificial intelligence (AI) change the transmission of monetary policy? We develop a two-sector heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian model with task-based production, in which AI automates part of the work in one exposed sector and leaves the other shielded. In the AI steady state, the economy holds more capital, and labor income shifts from the exposed workers, who lose through hours, to the shielded ...
2026| Alina Ermolaeva, Hannah Magdalena Seidl
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DIW Discussion Papers 2183 / 2026
This study estimates the effects of research and development (R&D) funding on firm performance and innovation activity in Germany for the period of 2000 to 2020. Since R&D collaborations between funded and non-funded firms can lead to positive externalities, our study accounts not only for the direct effects of the policy on funded firms but also for indirect (spillover) effects on non-funded firms. ...
2026| Knarik Poghosyan, Tobias Büscher
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DIW Discussion Papers 2182 / 2026
This study investigates the causal effect of Germany’s second-generation rent control policy — the Mietpreisbremse (rental brake) — on residential housing construction. Using administrative data covering nearly 11,000 German municipalities from 2010 to 2024, we employ staggered difference-in-differences estimators to address methodological biases of conventional two-way fixed effects models in settings ...
2026| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Michael Voigtländer
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DIW Discussion Papers 2181 / 2026
We estimate the direct and indirect causal effects of Germany’s Leading-Edge Cluster Competition on firm size, inventive activity, and joint patenting. With €600 million allocated to 15 clusters, this program is one of the largest cluster policy programs in Europe. Using a staggered event-study design, we estimate the direct effect of the cluster policy on firms within the funded clusters. Additionally, ...
2026| Knarik Poghosyan, Martin Kalthaus, Nadine Riedel, Michael Rothgang, Anne-Marie Scholz
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DIW Discussion Papers 2180 / 2026
We analyze how long-term electricity hedging design affects industrial investments in load-shifting capacity. These investments enable flexible electricity consumption and play a crucial role in integrating variable renewable energy. We develop a theoretical model of flexibility investment by a risk-averse industrial firm facing uncertainty about renewable generation and electricity prices. We compare ...
2026| Paula Prakash, Leon Stolle
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DIW Discussion Papers 2179 / 2026
Rising life expectancy and demographic change have increased the share of older workers, making their health and productivity central to aging societies. We study whether longer working lives translate into investments in work-related health before retirement. Exploiting a pension reform in Germany in a Regression Discontinuity Design, we show that women facing longer careers are more likely to apply ...
2026| Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan, Mia Teschner-Hofmann, Felix Weinhardt
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DIW Discussion Papers 2178 / 2026
Academic inequality between migrants and natives is often attributed to family dynamics that are difficult to observe. Siblings provide a way to study them: I estimate the effect of having a high-achieving sibling on the educational outcomes of children in migrant and native families. Using exogenous variation in sibling achievement from Sweden’s school-entry cutoff in a Regression Discontinuity Design, ...
2026| Anna Hasselqvist
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DIW Discussion Papers 2177 / 2026
We study how immigration affects prices through changes in labor supply. Using policy-driven increases in immigration to Germany and administrative data covering the universe of nursing homes, we find that one additional foreign-born woman per 100 residents reduces nursing-home care prices by 2.6 percent. The price effects are concentrated in more competitive markets. Examining potential mechanisms, ...
2026| Peter Haan, Julia Schmieder, Izabela Wnuk-Soares
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DIW Discussion Papers 2176 / 2026
The capital stock in Germany and other advanced economies has been aging persistently since 1970s, raising concerns about its implications for productivity, economic growth, and resilience. This study investigates the relationship between capital stock modernity and productivity dynamics using a panel dataset covering 24 European countries between 1997 and 2020. We employ a panel local projections ...
2026| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Jan-Christopher Scherer
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DIW Discussion Papers 2175 / 2026
The 2022 energy crisis led to sharp energy price surges and prompted public appeals and government programs to reduce energy consumption. This paper isolates energy savings driven by retail price increases from non-price driven savings attributable to other crisisrelated factors such as public appeals. Using German residential energy billing data and a DiD-PSM approach, we identify average price-driven ...
2026| Sophie M. Behr, Till Köveker, Merve Kücük
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DIW Discussion Papers 2174 / 2026
Divorce reshapes family life, yet little is known about one of its most consequential features: the allocation of child custody. We study the impact of joint versus sole custody on both parents and children using rich administrative data from Sweden linked to over 25 years of newly-collected court custody rulings. To address selection concerns, we exploit random assignment of custody disputes to judges ...
2026| Stella Canessa, Gordon B. Dahl, Anna Hasselqvist, Costas Meghir, Susan Niknami, Mårten Palme, Helmut Rainer, Olof Rosenqvist, Pengpeng Xiao
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DIW Discussion Papers 2173 / 2026
In this study, we examine the relationship between personality traits, captured by risk tolerance and the Big Five traits, and firm size, as measured by the number of employees. We show that the personality of entrepreneurs matters for the size of their firm they operate. We use a novel add-on to the German Socio-Economic Panel that includes a sub-sample of owner-managers running larger firms. High ...
2026| Berfin Kardaslar, Alexander S. Kritikos, Lukas Menkhoff
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DIW Discussion Papers 2172 / 2026
Despite decades of ambitious environmental policy, German consumption has continuously exceeded planetary-boundary thresholds in six of seven environmental dimensions since 1995, with little improvement over time. Combining environmentally extended multiregional input–output tables with life-cycle impact assessment, we develop a consumptionbased sustainability indicator across seven impact categories, ...
2026| Sonja Dobkowitz, Claudia Kemfert, Alexander Kriwoluzky, Georg Maxton, Laura Schmitz, Kristin Trautmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 2171 / 2026
We develop a three-step procedure for ex-ante policy evaluation. It combines (i) a vignette survey that randomizes out-of-sample policies (child allowances and external childcare subsidies) to infer fertility responses; (ii) two applied-theory lifecycle models estimated on external microdata; and (iii) the inserting of the randomized policies into the models’ estimated fertility decision rules to obtain ...
2026| Joshua Goldstein, Christos Koulovatianos, Jian Li, Carsten Schröder
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DIW Discussion Papers 2170 / 2026
We examine the aggregate effects of government spending and tax changes in a monetary union. We show theoretically that government consumption and government investment shocks have multipliers above 1, and consumption tax and income tax shocks have multipliers below 1. We test the predictions on quarterly euro area data, identifying the four fiscal shocks in a panel structural vector autoregression ...
2026| Gökhan Ider, Malte Rieth
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DIW Discussion Papers 2169 / 2026
How do labor demand shocks affect workforce diversity in the absence of targeted diversity policies? A conceptual framework illustrates the potential trade-off between the demographic and quality composition of a workforce when there is a positive labor demand shock. Exploiting the German reunification as a natural experiment, we analyze the academic labor market where nearly all social sciences professors ...
2026| Anna Bindler, Barbara Boelmann, Lena Janys and Luisa H. Santiago Wolf
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DIW Discussion Papers 2168 / 2026
AI can raise productivity by extracting information from rich data, yet little is known about how experts weigh AI-generated signals against established decision-support tools. We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 372 Danish primary care physicians (21.5% of all clinics), who make diagnostic and treatment decisions on urinary tract infection vignettes before and after receiving a diagnostic ...
2026| Shan Huang, Renke Schmacker, Hannes Ullrich
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DIW Discussion Papers 2167 / 2026
Empirical evidence on price premiums for green intermediate products is scarce, especially for energy-intensive basic materials. Evidence on such green premiums is relevant, as they may affect companies incentives to invest in green production technologies. Moreover, green premiums are important for the design of green support programmes, as support levels could be adjusted for companies’ green revenues. ...
2026| Till Köveker, Philipp Cremer
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DIW Discussion Papers 2166 / 2026
This paper provides a systematic analysis of German car drivers’ refuelling behaviour. A dataset combining population-representative individual-level GPS-tracking and survey information with data on fuel prices is used to identify 922 refuelling stops between April and December 2023. Besides a discussion of the conducted data processing and cleaning steps, the paper provides insights into German fuel ...
2026| Dennis Gaus, Heike Link