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Interview
Mr. Bach, there is growing criticism that the middle income segments are suffering from a tax and social contribution burden that is too heavy. Does the middle class pay a disproportionately high amount of income tax?
Actually, the middle class has a relatively low income tax burden. This is because we use the basic personal exemption to shield the subsistence level from taxation, and a range of deductions ...
18.05.2017| Stefan Bach
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Report
DIW Women’s Finance Summit Structural Change in the Financial Sector – Women’s Perspectives
Watch the conference via livestream. May 23, 2017 9:30 a.m. Venue: Deutsche Bank Berlin, Unter den Linden 13/15, 10117 Berlin With: Christine Lagarde, Viviane Reding, Sylvie Matherat, Axel A. Weber, Douglas Flint, Sandie O’Connor, Peter Grauer, Brenda Trenowden, Sir Philip Hampton, Marcel ...
15.05.2017
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Economic Bulletin
Is it common for central banks to intervene in foreign exchange markets in order to influence exchange rates? And if so, is it effective? From a German perspective, these questions seem surprising, since the European Central Bank (ECB) does not intervene in foreign exchange markets—rather, it lets the exchange rates float freely. The situation is very different in the emerging countries: according ...
04.05.2017| Tobias Heidland, Lukas Menkhoff
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Interview
Mr. Menkhoff, foreign exchange market interventions (FX interventions) can be used to influence international exchange rates. Where and how frequently are FX interventions implemented?
At present, these interventions take place predominantly in emerging and developing countries. In the countries that use them, an intervention takes place almost one out of every three days. [...]
04.05.2017| Lukas Menkhoff
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Personnel news
Cortnie Anne Shupe has been granted a scholarship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation from October 2017 on. The dean of the GC, Prof. Weizsäcker, congratulates her on her success!
02.05.2017
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Economic Bulletin
The presence of refugees in Germany and the challenges their integration poses have preoccupied the public for the past two years. According to the latest data of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), many more people in Germany were concerned about migration and xenophobia last year than in 2013. The additional representative results of the Barometer of Public Opinion on Refugees in Germany in 2016 and ...
28.04.2017| Philipp Eisnecker, Jannes Jacobsen, Jürgen Schupp
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Interview
Mr. Eisnecker, have the population’s concerns about refugee migration grown or declined?
We can conclusively say that in 2015 and 2016, the population was markedly more concerned about migration – and xenophobia as well. This statement is based on data from the Socio- Economic Panel (SOEP), a longitudinal survey, which has collected data on the population’s concerns on a range of ...
28.04.2017| Philipp Eisnecker
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Statement
Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German institute for economic research, on today's meeting of the ECB council:
27.04.2017| Marcel Fratzscher
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Report
The data from the 2015 survey of the SOEP Innovation Sample (SOEP-IS) have now been released and can be ordered by SOEP users. The current data distribution contains the data from the 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 innovative modules.
More information
26.04.2017
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Personnel news
Jan Stede has been granted a scholarship from the Stiftung der Deutschen Wirtschaft (sdw) from October 2017 on. The dean of the GC, Prof. Weizsäcker, congratulates him on his success!
25.04.2017
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Personnel news
Daniel Schnitzlein has been appointed to the advisory board of the Thailand Vietnam Socio-Economic Panel (www.tvsep.de). The TVSEP is a panel survey of households in Thailand and Vietnam (partly based on SOEP) and is managed from Hanover and Göttingen. The project will receive long-term financing for ten years (2015-2024) from Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Daniel has also become a member ...
24.04.2017
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Personnel news
Andreas Franken will be supporting the SOEP team as of April 1 with data preparation, in particular, the preparation and documentation of SOEPlong. Andreas most recently worked as a research assistant at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) in Hanover, and prior to this at the University of Bamberg Chair of Sociology, where he also earned his degree in sociolo ...
24.04.2017
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Report
We are happy to present our recent SOEPnewsletter 115, April 2017.
We like to inform about
the data release of the 2015 SOEP-IS data,
news on SOEPinfo 2.0,
results of the SOEP User Survey,
new SOEP-Core documentation documents,
and many more.
20.04.2017
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Press Release
Press release of the project group "Gemeinschaftsdiagnose": German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), ifo Institute, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research
12.04.2017
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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