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Report
Between October 17 and November 14, 2014, a number of SOEP users were kind enough to participate in this year’s SOEP User Survey and give us feedback about our services and infrastructure work. We would like to again thank all those who took the time to support our efforts at continually improving our services.
We are very pleased to be able to rely on a stable user community for our annual ...
22.12.2014
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Report
As a new technical feature, the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is now being tested with 111 smart phones that were purchased for use in the 2014 SOEP-IS survey. In the current fieldwork phase, the ESM is being used with around 250 respondents, who are asked questions about how they are currently feeling seven times a day on seven subsequent days. Respondents are given the smart phones for this period ...
22.12.2014
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Personnel news
SOEP Director Jürgen Schupp was appointed to the advisory board of the ZBW Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. As a service infrastructure of the Leibniz Association, the ZBW runs the German National Library of Economics, the world’s largest information center for economic literature, online as well as offline at its locations in Kiel and Hamburg. During the 2015 – 2017 appointment ...
21.12.2014
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Report
Starting in January 2015, researchers from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) research infrastructure at DIW Berlin will, together with colleagues from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg and the University of Potsdam, be making data available for evaluation of the new statutory minimum wage in Germany. They will not only be analyzing the data themselves but also providing them for ...
21.12.2014
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Report
The link to the GC Online Application Form has been activated! From now on, the GC welcomes outstanding students from around the world to apply for our doctoral program. Please note the application deadline is March 31. If you have any inquiries concerning the application, please feel free to contact our colleague Nadin Gahrns (gradcenter@diw.de). We will inform candidates on interview appointments ...
19.12.2014
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Report
Follow up with the household questionnaires
We would first like to thank everyone who took time to take a critical look at our proposed deletions and changes in the different blocs of questions included in the individual questionnaire at periodic intervals. These changes are still under discussion so it is not too late for you to submit comments if you have not done so already. To involve our English ...
18.12.2014
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Personnel news
Lilo Wagner has sucessfully defended her doctoral thesis at the Technical University of Berlin in December 2014. The thesis entitled Three Essays on Communication in Signalling Games was supervised by Prof. Dr. Pio Baake, DIW Berlin and TU Berlin, and Prof. Dr. Dorothea Kübler, WZB und TU Berlin. Since September 2009, Lilo Wagner has been a doctoral student at the DIW Berlin Graduate Center and ...
17.12.2014
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Press Release
The German economy has veered back on an upward course, after weak growth in the summer semester 2014. In this projection, real GDP is estimated to grow by 1.5 percent in 2014, by 1.4 percent in 2015 and by 1.7 percent in 2016. Inflation is projected to remain low, with 0.9 percent in 2014, 0.7 percent in 2015 and 1.4 percent in 2016. The growth rate of the global economy rose slightly in the third ...
17.12.2014
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Press Release
The situation of public budgets is relaxed and will remain so in the years 2015 and 2016 - despite a slight weakening in the coming year. In 2014, the overall budget is estimated to show a surplus of 0.5 percent relative to nominal gross domestic product; next year the surplus will shrink to 0.1 percent - mainly due to the increased pension payments - and in 2016it will reach 0.4 percent. The debt ...
17.12.2014
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Report
Starting in January 2015, researchers from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) research infrastructure at DIW Berlin will, together with colleagues from the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg and the University of Potsdam, be making data available for evaluation of the new statutory minimum wage in Germany. They will not only be analyzing the data themselves but also providing them for ...
15.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Karl Brenke, Marcel Fratzscher, Markus M. Grabka, Elke Holst, Sebastian Hülle, Stefan Liebig, Maximilian Priem, Anika Rasner, Pia S. Schober, Jürgen Schupp, Juliane F. Stahl, Anna Wieber in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
People’s expectations after the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago and of reunification in 1990 were huge. The government promised to create “flourishing ...
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Karl Brenke in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
The economic gap between eastern and western Germany is still sizeable, even 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In terms of GDP per inhabitant and productivity, eastern Germany has attained nearly three-quarters of western German levels, respectively. Since some years, the catch-up process is advancing very slowly indeed. The main reason ...
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Karl Brenke in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
Eastern Germany Must Focus on Education and Innovation: Six Questions to Karl Brenke
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Markus M. Grabka in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
Very nearly 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, households in eastern Germany have an average net worth of 67,400 euros which is less than half that of their counterparts in western Germany with an average net worth of 153,200 euros. In both parts of the country, real estate ownership is quantitatively the most important asset type. Although ...
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Elke Holst and Anna Wieber in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
Almost a quarter of a century after the fall of the Wall, there are still more women in employment in eastern Germany than in the west. Although the disparity is marginal now, the two regions started from dramatically different levels. In 1991, immediately after reunification, the employment rate for women in western Germany ...
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Anika Rasner in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
Now, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, eastern and western German men are receiving similar state pensions, the main pillar in the system of old age provision in Germany. In contrast, the average pension paid to eastern German women far exceeds that of their western counterparts. A cohort comparison shows a narrowing of the gender gap ...
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Pia S. Schober and Juliane F. Stahl in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
In East Germany, prior to reunification, daycare provision was widely available to encourage mothers to return to work soon after giving birth. Conversely, in West Germany, childcare facilities for under-threes were few and far between and, at the end of the ’80s/ beginning of the ’90s, the length of parental ...
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Stefan Liebig and Sebastian Hülle, Jürgen Schupp in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
Almost twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, far more eastern Germans are unhappy with their income than western Germans. In 2013, around 44 percent of employed eastern Germans rated their earnings as unjust compared with approximately one-third in western Germany. Although the east-west ...
11.12.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Maximilian Priem and Jürgen Schupp in: DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2014
It is now a quarter of a century since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the gap in living standards between eastern and western Germany is still not fully closed. Admittedly, this could not realistically have been expected. Despite the increase in life satisfaction in eastern Germany, the east-west divide prevails. Evidence ...
11.12.2014
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Press Release
The financial relationship between central government and the federal states is about to undergo major reforms. In addition to reorganizing financial equalization, policy-makers are now discussing providing financial aid for structurally weak regions once the Solidarity Pact expires, bolstering the general financial strength of states and establishing an effective debt ceiling. Against this backdrop, ...
10.12.2014