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Press Release
Speculative house price increases potentially mean major real and financial risks and have increasingly been the subject of current public debate in Germany. Recent events in countries such as the US or Spain have demonstrated the negative impact that the bursting of speculative price bubbles can have on national economies. However, the signs of speculative property price bubbles are difficult to detect ...
19.11.2014
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Press Release
According to the climate target set by the German government for 2020, greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels. However, current projections indicate that this target will only be achieved if further measures are implemented. The power sector has an important role to play here, around 85 percent of its emissions are produced by lignite and hard-coal power plants. ...
19.11.2014
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Press Release
Statistics on corporate earnings in Germany are still not being recorded satisfactorily, despite them being an important economic indicator. To date, DaFNE remains a seldom-used data basis for describing company profits. It includes statutory financial statements (balance sheet, profit and loss statement) in a longitudinal (panel) data format that enables individual company profits to be tracked and ...
05.11.2014
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Press Release
The German economy will grow by 1.3 percent this year and by 1.2 percent in 2015, predict the economic research institutes involved in the Joint Economic Forecast in their autumn report. According to the report, Germany’s economy has cooled down markedly. With economic output falling in the second quarter and stagnating in the third quarter of 2014, the engine for economic growth is proving hard ...
09.10.2014
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Press Release
The heating market plays a key role in achieving the Federal Government's energy and climate policy objectives. In particular, major savings need to be made in heating residential buildings if the majority of buildings are to be climate-neutral by 2050. In light of this, DIW Berlin and ista Deutschland GmbH have created an up-to-date data basis that is based on the heating energy bills of apartment ...
09.10.2014
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Press Release
Economically, Greece is still at rock bottom. Following massive cuts to its unit labor costs, the country no longer has any cost problems but its economy has not yet been reanimated. This makes it quite evident that by focusing solely on cost reductions and institutional reforms, the troika program did not go far enough. Without further reforms, certain sectors of the Greek economy such as tourism, ...
24.09.2014
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Press Release
The German economy will grow by 1.5 percent this year. In the coming year, the increase in GDP will be somewhat higher at 1.8 percent. The jobless rate will be 6.7 percent this year but it will rise by three-tenths of a percentage point in the coming year. Inflation will remain moderate in both years; prices will rise by 1.0 percent this year and 1.5 percent in 2015. Global economic growth was far ...
17.09.2014
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Press Release
Although the European Central Bank (ECB) has been pursuing an expansionary monetary policy course for many years, inflation in the euro area remains extremely weak. Furthermore, as the present Wochenbericht clearly demonstrates, the inflation expectations in the euro area are no longer firmly anchored. Expectations are becoming increasingly decoupled from the ECB's inflation target which, in turn, ...
10.09.2014
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Press Release
The first ever gender-specific analysis of income and tax distribution in Germany has been implemented using the most recently available data on personal income tax statistics from 2007. According to its findings, the average income of women is only half that of men. This income gap is less pronounced in capital and rental income than in earned income. The total average personal income tax burden for ...
27.08.2014
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Press Release
Both economic and security policies increasingly rely on opportunities to use and analyze personal data. These opportunities are, however, not universally considered to be positive bythe general public. This applies to digital surveillance in particular. DIW Berlin has analyzed how much trust the general public has in surveillance measures such as communicationsdata retention or the storage of flight ...
20.08.2014
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Press Release
In the past decade, wages in Germany have risen more slowly than economic performance. Year on year, average wages remained approximately 0.3 percent behind what was available in redistribution volume, given the development of production. Although there are also sectors with low wages, in which wage increases were insufficient according to this benchmark--such as the hospitality industry, construction, ...
13.08.2014
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Press Release
There are fewer and fewer people employed in the German manufacturing sector. Between 1999 and 2013, the number of people working in the industry fell from 7.7 million to 7.3 million. However, not all areas have been equally affected by the decline, rather, there has been a functional restructuring within the industry: while fewer people are being employed in production, employment in many production-related ...
13.08.2014
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Press Release
Greece finds itself at the crossroads. There is the imminent question if Greece should apply for a third public support programme. Government officials are confronting European partners with new calls for a de facto haircut on its outstanding debt. Another option would be to swap existing loans from the European support programs into GDP-linked loans. As a result, interest payments would be linked ...
30.07.2014
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Press Release
The mobility of the labor force within the European Union - measured as the proportion of EU foreigners in EU-15 countries to the total EU labor force - increased by approximately one-quarter to almost 3.1 percent from 2007 to 2012. This is primarily due to increased migration of persons from the new eastern European EU member states such as Poland and Romania and, to a lesser degree, due to increased ...
23.07.2014
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Press Release
Economists have long discussed the correlation between the quality of competition policies and a country's productivity growth. It is, however, very difficult to prove this connection, to determine its extent or to quantify it. Commissioned by the European Commission, a team of international researchers, led by DIW competition expert Tomaso Duso, has developed the first evaluation system to assess ...
16.07.2014
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Press Release
One of the key tasks of this legislative period is to restructure the federal fiscal equalization system by 2020. There is a lot of money involved: in 2013, nearly 14 percent of ultimate tax revenue from the Länder was redistributed. The existing system has developed over time, is highly complex and convoluted. Thus, there is a high demand for modifications and fundamental adjustments would be ...
09.07.2014
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Press Release
An investment fund should temporarily improve the capital stock of small and medium-sized enterprises as part of a comprehensive agenda - In the euro area, there is an annual investment gap of approximately two percent of GDP or 180 billion euros - Many sectors both in the manufacturing and service industries are showing signs of a significant lack of investment, especially the energy sectorThe German ...
03.07.2014
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Press Release
Coal-fired power stations are responsible for around a third of Germany's carbon emissions. Failure to reduce the persistently high level of coal-fired power generation threatens Germany's climate targets for 2020 and 2050 and undermines a sustainable energy transition. Calculations by DIW Berlin and other expert opinions prove that, in the long term, lignite, in particular, is no longer relevant for ...
25.06.2014
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Press Release
The German economy is expected to grow by 1.8 percent in 2014, keeping that pace in 2015, at a rate of two percent. GDP is expected to grow during the forecast period at rates only slightly above the trend; the slight under-utilization will therefore decrease correspondingly slowly. Inflation remains weak. Global economic growth was weaker at the start of the year. In both the industrialized and emerging ...
17.06.2014
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Press Release
The crisis in the European currency area is not over yet. Although the situation in the financial markets is currently relatively calm, the economic crisis appears to be bottoming out in most countries. Nevertheless, fundamental design flaws in the Monetary Union continue to exist. If these are not fully addressed, it will only be a matter of time before a new crisis hits, and a partial or complete ...
12.06.2014