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Press Release
Technology transfer primary motive behind Chinese OFDI in Western Europe; access to EU internal market motivates OFDI in Central and Eastern Europe; factors influencing investment decisions differ based on type of investment
China’s investment strategy in the EU differs depending on the target country. With investment in Western Europe, the main motivation is gaining access to advanced technologies. ...
05.04.2017
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Interview
Mr. Dreger, how high is China’s OFDI, and how has it been developing over the past few years?
Chinese global FDI amounts to 150 billion US dollars—and it is on the rise. The flows have grown substantially since the financial crisis. China is now the second largest investor in the global economy. More than 40 percent of China’s FDI in developed countries flows into Europe, and the ...
05.04.2017| Christian Dreger
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Report
Researchers of DIW Berlin and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have published a joint article on start-up costs of thermal power plants in the journal Nature Energy. Before power plants fueled by coal, natural gas or oil are able to generate electricity, they have to be started up to a minimum load level. This incurs costs related to additional fuel consumption as well as wear ...
04.04.2017| Wolf-Peter Schill
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Economic Bulletin
Starting from a low level, in recent years the battery-supported self-consumption of solar electricity (solar prosumage) has grown significantly in Germany. Its growth is primarily due to the opposing trends in household electricity prices and feed-in tariffs in conjunction with government incentives for battery storage. Various benefits of solar prosumage speak to its positive potential in the German ...
29.03.2017| Claudia Kemfert, Wolf-Peter Schill, Alexander Zerrahn
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Interview
Mr. Schill, what role does decentralized prosumage with solar power and battery storage currently play in Germany?
The battery-supported self-generation and consumption of electricity from solar sources is still a niche in the German market. Around 50,000 storage batteries have been installed here to date. On the whole that’s not a lot. Their total storage capacity is significantly lower than ...
29.03.2017| Wolf-Peter Schill
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Personnel news
Hannes Ullrich from the department of Firms and Markets was accepted as a member of the Committee on Industrial Economics of the German Economic Association (VfS). With around 4,000 members – both individuals and institutions – the association is one of Europe’s largest associations of economists. 24 committees are responsible for a large part of the research work carried ...
24.03.2017
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Press Release
People across Germany are happier today than at any other point since German reunification
According to a new analysis of data from the nationally representative, long-term Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study, people in both West and East Germany have been happier on average since 2015 than at any other point since German reunification (Figure 1). The substantial increase in life satisfaction from 1990 ...
22.03.2017
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Economic Bulletin
The world economy continues on its upward growth path, with global production expected to grow by 3.7 percent this year and slightly more than that in 2018. The economies in both the developed and the emerging countries are gaining momentum. Solid output growth is expected for the U.S. and euro area over the forecast period; China’s growth rates remain high, though they are declining somewhat; ...
20.03.2017| Claus Michelsen
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Economic Bulletin
The German economy's upward growth trend continues, with the economic output expected to increase by 1.4 percent this year with slightly overloaded capacities. Employment growth remains strong with the creation of 600,000 new jobs, which has in turn led to an increase in private consumption – one of the key growth drivers of the German economy. The higher inflation rates are dampening purchasing ...
20.03.2017| Claus Michelsen
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Interview
Mr. Fichtner, will the German economy be able to maintain 2016’s growth momentum over the course of the current year?
Although Germany’s economic growth will be a bit lower in 2017, this is primarily due to the fact that there are fewer workdays this year than there were last year – and not because the economy is running out of steam. Another factor is the recent sharp increase in ...
20.03.2017| Ferdinand Fichtner
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In the media
The op-ed by Marcel Fratzscher was first published on foreignpolicy.com on March 16, 2017.
If Trump wants a Europe that takes care of its own needs, he needs a strong partner in Berlin.
Donald Trump’s relationship with Angela Merkel has gotten off to a rocky start. Trump has, effectively, singled out Germany and its chancellor as his main nemesis in Europe. He has criticized her for her policy ...
17.03.2017
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Blog Marcel Fratzscher
If Trump wants a Europe that takes care of its own needs, he needs a strong partner in Berlin.
Donald Trump’s relationship with Angela Merkel has gotten off to a rocky start. Trump has, effectively, singled out Germany and its chancellor as his main nemesis in Europe. He has criticized her for her policy toward refugees, for an unfair trade policy, and for a lack of leadership in Europe. For ...
17.03.2017| Marcel Fratzscher
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Economic Bulletin
The cumulative growth rate of the German economy since reunification would have been around two percentage points higher if income inequality had remained constant. This is what simulations using the DIW Macroeconomic Model have shown. They were made under the assumption that the income distribution dynamics would not be influenced by any feedback effects of economic growth. In 2015, Germany’s ...
15.03.2017| Marius Clemens, Stefan Gebauer, Simon Junker
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Interview
Mr. Fichtner, DIW Berlin examined the relationship between rising income inequality and economic growth. Would Germany have higher growth if income inequality had not risen in recent years?
Yes, Germany’s economic growth would actually have been somewhat higher if income inequality had not sharply increased between 1991 and 2015. The German economy showed an unre - alized growth potential of ...
15.03.2017| Ferdinand Fichtner
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Personnel news
Sarah Dahmann, who worked at the department of Socio-Economic Panel until December 2016, has successfully defended her dissertation at Freie Universität zu Berlin.The dissertation with the title „Human Capital Returns to Education – Three Essays on the Causal Effects of Schooling on Skills and Health“ was supervised by Prof. Dr. C. Katharina Spieß (DIW Berlin, Freie Universität ...
14.03.2017
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Report
On Monday, Maurice Obstfeld, IMF chief economist and former economic advisor of Barack Obama, commented on the new IMF-Paper „Labor and product market reforms in advanced economies: fiscal costs, gains, and support” during a DIW Berlin event about „The role of fiscal policy in advancing structural reforms in Europe“. The paper concludes that reforms do not just grow the ...
14.03.2017
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Blog Marcel Fratzscher
Now that Germany’s current-account surplus has reached a record €270 billion ($285 billion), or close to 8.7% of GDP, the ongoing debate about its economic model has intensified. Eurozone politicians and Donald Trump’s administration in the United States are each blaming the other for the economic imbalance; and all are blaming the euro.
Trump’s administration, for its part, ...
07.03.2017| Marcel Fratzscher
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Report
Beside the normal documentation on generated variables, we now for the first time provide 2015 questionnaires (indiviuals and biographical) generated from metadata.
Beside the questions, the documents contain the variable names and labels used in SOEP-Core and SOEPlong as well as the names of the data set containing the data. We published these questionnaires in an English and a German version.
Please ...
06.03.2017
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Interview
Rainer Winkelmann’s research on unemployment and happiness using SOEP data led to his groundbreaking 1998 paper “Why are the unemployed so unhappy?” (written jointly by Liliana Winkelmann), which conclusively demonstrated—for the first time—that unemployment makes people unhappy. It is the most widely cited paper in the history of the SOEP.
Rainer Winkelmann studied economics ...
06.03.2017
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In the media
The op-ed by Marcel Fratzscher was first published on FT.com on February 28, 2017.
The emergence of Martin Schulz as the centre-left Social Democrats’ (SPD) candidate for chancellor has fundamentally altered the dynamics of German politics. It is also changing the debate in Germany on inequality and the future of Europe in ways that will have a significant impact across the continent.
Germany ...
03.03.2017