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Press Release
The construction industry remains a key pillar of the German economy. According to the latest construction volume calculations by DIW Berlin, the value of construction in the current and coming year is forecast to grow far more rapidly than the economy as a whole: by a price-adjusted 3.3 percent in 2014 and 2.1 percent in 2015. Currently, new residential construction is an important engine for growth ...
26.11.2014
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Press Release
Germany's energy transition envisages a shift toward energy being supplied primarily from renewable sources. The expansion of renewables is largely determined by central government policy but the German Länder also play a major role and could consequently make a significant contribution toward a successful energy transition. DIW Berlin recently conducted its fourth renewable energy ranking of ...
26.11.2014
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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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Economic Bulletin
by Alexander S. Kritikos in: DIW Economic Bulletin 10/2014
Although Greece is showing initial signs of recovering from its 2008 crash, its economy continues to suffer. It has become clear that the economy will not become prosperous only by the given recommendations of the so called Troika, namely by cutting costs and public expenditures, and by making institutional reforms, as much as these steps ...
17.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
Economic Reinvention: Greece's path forward: Six Questions to Alexander Kritikos
17.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Kerstin Bernoth, Patrick Burauel and Philipp Engler in: DIW Economic Bulletin 10/2014
Member countries of the euro area, and the peripheral states in particular, face an especially difficult problem: on the one hand, they urgently need stronger economic growth to reduce high debt and unemployment levels. On the other hand, however, they have no scope to use fiscal policy to stimulate ...
17.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Christoph Große Steffen and Julian Schumacher in: DIW Economic Bulletin 10/2014
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) stated in spring of this year that a more timely restructuring of Greece’s sovereign debt would have been beneficial. But what are the available options for early debt restructuring? The report argues that current reforms in the Euro area, in particular, introducing ...
17.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Philipp Engler and Christoph Große Steffen in: DIW Economic Bulletin 10/2014
The cost of state bankruptcy in the euro area is incalculable due to the repercussions for the financial system. As a result of contagion effects, there is a risk that the entire Monetary Union could be pushed into deep recession. This forces euro area member states to implement rescue packages during ...
17.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Ferdinand Fichtner and Peter Haan in: DIW Economic Bulletin 10/2014
Depending on how it is structured, the introduction of a European unemployment insurance within the euro area could make a significant contribution to stabilizing economic developments. This even applies to a relatively small-scale system (based on the volume of transfers) with a maximum eligibility period of six months and ...
17.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Ferdinand Fichtner, Marcel Fratzscher, Maximilian Podstawski, Dirk Ulbricht in: DIW Economic Bulletin 9/2014
The crisis in the European currency area is not yet over. Although the situation in the financial markets is currently relatively calm, the economic crisis appears to be bottoming out in most countries. Nevertheless, there are still fundamental design flaws in the Monetary Union. If ...
06.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
Stabilizing the European Monetary Union: High Time for More Reforms! Seven Questions to Ferdinand Fichtner
06.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Gerhard Illing and Philipp König in: Economic Bulletin 9/2014
In the wake of the recent European debt crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has grown significantly in importance. As the crisis worsened, the ECB needed to take measures that went far beyond standard monetary policy operations - particularly with respect to its function as lender of last resort. It provided the banking sector ...
06.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Franziska Bremus and Claudia Lambert in: Economic Bulletin 9/2014
Despite the most recent period of calm on the financial markets, the long-term resilience of the European financial system is not yet assured, even several years after the financial crisis began. However, the stability of the financial system playsa crucial role for real economic development and consequently for growth and prosperity. ...
06.11.2014
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Economic Bulletin
by Marcel Fratzscher, Christoph Große Steffen, Malte Rieth in: Economic Bulletin 9/2014
Greece is standing at a crossroads. The need for a third rescue package has now become a critical issue. The Greek government is calling for another de facto-public debt restructuring. An alternative option presented here would be to convert existing GLF loans into GDP-linked loans. Interest payments ...
06.11.2014
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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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Report
The SOEP questionnaires appear to have an almost insatiable thirst for knowledge. This can be seen, on the one hand, in the multidisciplinarity and topicality of the questionnaires, and, on the other hand, in the SOEP’s attempt to provide the same data over longer periods of time (longitudinally), which in turn makes it difficult to keep the questionnaires a reasonable length. When we started ...
27.10.2014
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Report
We would like to remind you of the possibilities of the SOEP Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS) and encourage you to consider using this instrument in developing new empirical research questions. SOEP-IS is well suited to short-term experiments, but it is particularly useful for long-term surveys that are not possible in the framework of the core SOEP—whether because the instruments are not yet established ...
27.10.2014
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Report
In summer 2014, the German government passed legislation to gradually introduce a mandatory minimum wage across all sectors. The revision of SOEP questionnaires reported on above offers the chance to include additional questions on this “natural experiment”. Our focus is on the SOEP questions about contractually stipulated working hours, paid working hours, the number of hours actually ...
27.10.2014
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Interview
John Haisken-DeNew is Professor of Economics and Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne. He previously held a position as Professor of Economics and Chair in “Economic Policy: Competition Theory and Policy” at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. Originally from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, he came to Germany in 1988 first as a ...
27.10.2014