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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
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Personnel news
Marvin Petrenz joined the SOEP in early November as our new trainee Specialist in Market and Social Research. He is thus the fourth “cohort” of students trained in the SOEP for this profession. Marvin comes from the field of product design and will be contributing his own expertise in the area of surveys.
08.12.2014
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Press Release
Income inequality is usually considered in terms of its current development. A long-term perspective allows us to compare the income situation of today’s generation with that of their parents. For the first time ever, we have measured the inequality of wages and salaries earned over an entire working lifetime using a new kind of dataset. The findings show that the inequality of lifetime social ...
03.12.2014
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Report
In November 2014, Nils Saniter and Yun Cao visited 9 top faculties of economics in Beijing and Shanghai, China, to support the DIW Graduate Center become more well-known internationally. At world class universities such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University they presented the GC to audiences of interested graduate students. Moreover, the GC participated in a DAAD delegation of ...
02.12.2014
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Report
The SOEP data remain an interesting start point for research from many areas. The high number of presentations with SOEP data on national and international conferences show proof for that. On the following website you can see a composition of presentations held on basis of the SOEP data: Please click here
01.12.2014
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Personnel news
Ingrid Tucci accepted her appointment to a junior professorship for "The Sociology of Migration from Comparative Perspective." Marco Giesselmann accepted his appointment to a junior professorship for "Quantitative Methods of Empirical Social Research".
Both will be teaching at the Faculty of Sociology of the University of Bielefeld starting in the winter semester 2014/2015. Both positions were created ...
28.11.2014
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Report
Prof. Dr. Steven A. Gabriel, Research Fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), was awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander Humboldt Foundation in late 2014. Prof. Gabriel is Full Professor for Operations Research at the University of Maryland (USA) and has been a Research Professor at DIW Berlin since 2008. He is a well-known expert in the field of ...
27.11.2014
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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