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Interview
Mr. Engler, Mr. Klein: In 2010, several European countries started implementing austerity measures to reduce their sovereign debt. Of these countries, you studied the southern European countries of Spain, Portugal, and Italy as examples. To what extent was the austerity policy successful there?
Philipp Engler: The austerity measures were not successful. The absolute level of sovereign debt has risen ...
22.02.2017| Philipp Engler, Mathias Klein
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Economic Bulletin
According to the German federal government’s climate protection targets, there will be a continuous reduction of lignite-based electricity well before 2030. Simulations show that the currently authorized lignite mines in eastern Germany would not be fully depleted if the climate protection targets for 2030 were complied with. This makes planning for new mines or the expansion of existing ones ...
13.02.2017| Claudia Kemfert, Pao-Yu Oei, Dorothea Schäfer
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Interview
Mrs. Kemfert, what role will lignite play in the future of Germany’s energy supply?
In the future, lignite will have less of a role in supplying energy in Germany because we want to fulfill the international climate targets in this country. We aspire to an energy transition that has the goal of boosting renewable energy’s share of production to at least 80 percent by 2050. This is ...
13.02.2017| Claudia Kemfert
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Economic Bulletin
A significant rise in Germany’s construction volume is expected for this year and the next, even if the growth is not as pronounced as it was in 2016. According to DIW Berlin’s latest construction volume calculations, the sum of all new construction and building refurbishments will increase in real terms by 1.6 and 2.4 percent in 2017 and 2018, respectively, from a rate of 2.5 percent in ...
13.02.2017| Claus Michelsen
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Report
Jannes Jacobsen, Jana Jaworski, and Lisa Pagel recently joined the SOEP as part of the project Refugee Families in Germany (GeFam).
Jannes completed his master’s degree in Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin in early 2016. His master’s thesis deals with antisemitism and racism, examining these issues in different religions from a comparative perspective. His research interests ...
08.02.2017
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Report
Christoph Halbmeier started to work in February as a SOEP research assistant on the DFG project “Wealth Distribution in Switzerland and Germany: Evidence from Survey Data”. He finished his degree in economics in October of last year at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His master’s thesis analyzed the effects of trade on the labor productivity in German industries. He worked ...
08.02.2017
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Report
Sarah Dahmann successfully defended her dissertation on “Human Capital Returns to Education – Three Essays on the Causal Effects of Schooling on Skills and Health” at Freie Universität Berlin. On the same day, she received her graduation certificate from the DIW Graduate Center at a ceremony with 15 other PhD graduates, including three former SOEP members, Elisabeth Church (née ...
08.02.2017
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Report
At its November 2016 meeting, the DIW Berlin Board of Trustees appointed two new members to an initial three-year term on the SOEP Survey Committee. As of 2017, Arthur van Soest, Professor at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management, Netherlands, and Urs Fischbacher, Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Konstanz, join the other seven members of the SOEP Survey Committee in advising ...
08.02.2017
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Report
Ralph Hertwig, cognitive psychologist at Berlin's Max Planck Institute for Human Development, has received the 2017 Funding Prize in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Programme from the DFG (German Research Foundation) for his work on the psychology of human judgment and decision-making. Ralph Hertwig is the fourth SOEP data user to be awarded this distinguished research prize: he was preceded by Ulman ...
08.02.2017
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Report
Hannes Kröger joined the SOEP group in December 2016. He holds a PhD in Sociology from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His dissertation investigated health selection effects on the German labor market. After his dissertation, Hannes worked at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, investigating health inequalities in a life course perspective. At the SOEP, he works in the BRISE ...
08.02.2017
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Report
The paper “Berufsgruppe ‘Erzieherin’: Zufrieden mit der Arbeit, aber nicht mit der Entlohnung” by C. Katharina Spieß and Franz G. Westermaier published in the DIW-Wochenbericht Nr. 43 (in German) in 2016 has again shown that the SOEP sample size is now so large that it provides the basis for statistically valid findings on even relatively small population groups. We encourage ...
08.02.2017
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Economic Bulletin
The real disposable income of private households in Germany, accounting for inflation, rose by 12 percent between 1991 and 2014. This is what the present study based on data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) has shown. However, the trends varied greatly depending on income group. While the middle income segment rose by more than eight percent, the highest income segment increased by up to 26 percent. ...
03.02.2017| Jan Goebel, Markus M. Grabka
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Interview
Mr. Grabka, the German economy has flourished in recent years. To what extent is its economic growth reflected in the growth of income?
On average across the total population disposable household income after inflation has risen, but depending on their income level, various segments of the population have contributed to this increase differently. [...]
03.02.2017| Markus M. Grabka
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Report
Euroframe Conference on Economic Policy Issues in the European UnionGrowth and inequality: Challenges for EU economies Friday, 9 June 2017, Berlin
The EUROFRAME group of research institutes (CASE, CPB, DIW, ESRI, ETLA, IfW, NIESR, OFCE, PROMETEIA, WIFO) will hold its fourteenth annual Conference on Economic Policy Issues in the European Union in Berlin on Friday 9 June 2017. ...
03.02.2017
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Interview
As part of a joint investigation, DIW Berlin and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg analyzed how investing in the labor market integration of the refugees who came to Germany in 2015 might impact the overall economy. The institutionsbased their analyses on a simulation model. What are the assumptions underlying this model?
We examined data on the 2015 refugees and analyzed this ...
02.02.2017| Stefan Bach
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Economic Bulletin
The initial fiscal costs associated with refugee integration a requite high—but as more and more refugees join the labor force, a reduction in ongoing welfare costs and an increase in government revenue will result. Against this background, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg and DIW Berlin conducted a joint investigation (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Labor and ...
02.02.2017| Maximilian Bach, Kristina van Deuverden, Peter Haan
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Personnel news
Florian Mölders, a DIW Graduate Center alumnus, has received the Journal of International Trade and Economic Development Best Paper Prize 2016 for your article ‘International knowledge spillovers through high-tech imports and R&D of foreign-owned firms’, published in volume 25, issue 4. together with Heike Belitz.
01.02.2017
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Economic Bulletin
The gender quota for supervisory boards that has been mandatory since January 2016 has shown an initial impact. According to DIW Berlin’s Women Executives Barometer, at the end of 2016, there were more women on the supervisory boards of the 106 companies subject to the statutory quota than one year before. Their proportion increased by a solid four percentage points to more than 27 percent. ...
20.01.2017| Elke Holst, Katharina Wrohlich
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Interview
Since January 1, 2016, Germany has a statutory gender quota for corporate supervisory boards. Women must be appointed to vacant positions until the board has a proportion of 30 percent. Mrs. Holst, it’s been almost exactly one year – is it possible to draw any initial conclusions?
The law is showing some initial effects. For example, the companies subject to the gender quota have increased ...
20.01.2017| Elke Holst
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Report
Women are still in the clear minority among the financial sector’s top decision-making bodies. According to DIW Berlin’s Women Executives Barometer, at the end of 2016, 21 percent of the supervisory and administrative board members of the 100 largest banks were female. The number has stagnated compared to last year. Since 2010, when the discussion about the gender quota for supervisory ...
20.01.2017| Elke Holst, Katharina Wrohlich