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81 results, from 61
  • DIW Roundup 53 / 2015

    Is There a Bubble in the German Housing Market?

    After a period of stagnation that lasted for almost two decades, German house prices began to grow at an accelerated pace since late 2010. Real house prices that even had been declining in 2000-2008 started to climb up steeply from the second half of 2010, followed by a recovery of construction activities. This development raised concerns about the formation of a speculative house price bubble among ...

    2015| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Claus Michelsen, Dirk Ulbricht
  • DIW Roundup 51 / 2015

    Individual Insurance and Mutual Support Arrangements in Developing Countries

    Insurance coverage in the developing world is expanding rapidly. As recently as 2005, only a small number of commercial insurers offered insurance products that specifically targeted low-income people (‘microinsurance’). Seven years later, in 2012, more than half of the world’s 50 largest insurance companies were involved in microinsurance. International donor organizations, which identified the promotion ...

    2015| Friederike Lenel
  • DIW Roundup 48 / 2014

    The Health Effects of Retirement

    Retirement leads to changes in daily life that may affect health positively or negatively. Existing empirical evidence is inconclusive: While a few studies identify negative health effects, the majority of studies find no or positive effects of retirement on health. The mechanisms behind these effects remain unclear, as is the question of which parts of the population benefit most from retirement. ...

    2014| Peter Eibich
  • DIW Roundup 46 / 2014

    Daddy Leave: Does It Change the Gender Division of Domestic Work?

    How to best provide incentives for a more gender-equal division of domestic work has entered policy debates in many Western countries. Growing evidence suggests that a gender-traditional division of household labor may result in lower fertility rates and greater risk of relationship breakdown and correlates with gender employment and wage gaps. Partly in response, many European countries have implemented ...

    2014| Pia S. Schober
  • DIW Roundup 44 / 2014

    Modelling the Impact of Energy and Climate Policies

    Climate change mitigation and the transformation to a global low-carbon economy is a pressing issue in policy discussions and international negotiations. The political debate is supported by the scientific community with a large number of projections, pathway simulations and scenario analyses of the global energy system and its development over the next decades. These studies are often based on numerical ...

    2014| Daniel Huppmann, Franziska Holz
  • DIW Roundup 42 / 2014

    The Controversy over the Free-Trade Agreement TTIP

    A short name is causing a lasting debate: TTIP [tiːt|p]. Ever since the beginning of the negotiations in the summer of 2013, media coverage of the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US has contributed to a critical debate on the topic. In doing so, difficulties have arisen in differentiating factually substantiated arguments from one-sided statements. TTIP ...

    2014| Philipp M. Richter, Greta F. Schäffer
  • DIW Roundup 37 / 2014

    Skills Training for Entrepreneurs in Developing Countries

    For most of the developing world, microenterprises are a key source of income and employment creation. For many countries the informal sector, where most of the small enterprises exist, represents over 80% of employment (ILO 2012). These businesses often have a difficult time growing. There are a number of reasons that have been put forward by policy makers and researchers for this lack of growth, ...

    2014| Nathan Fiala
  • DIW Roundup 34 / 2014

    The Role of Financial Literacy and of Financial Education Interventions in Developing Countries

    Financial literacy has received increased attention since the global financial crisis and the literature confirms that it is correlated with higher household well-being. In parallel, financial education programs have grown in popularity and an increasing number of countries are developing national financial education strategies and making more investments in related programs. However, the evidence ...

    2014| Margherita Calderone
  • DIW Roundup 33 / 2014

    Unconditional Basic Income: An Economic Perspective

    A wide range of public figures from the social sciences, politics and business have proposed paying every citizen a fixed amount of income without means testing or work requirement. The idea is fascinating. Most recently, a widely reported crowd-funding initiative from Berlin collected €12,000 to finance one year’s worth of unconditional basic income for a randomly selected individual.

    2014| Luke Haywood
  • DIW Roundup 31 / 2014

    Internal Migration in Developing Countries

    For people in rural areas of developing countries, finding a better paying job or better education is often only possible by moving – migrating – somewhere else. Moreover, agricultural production, generally the main economic activity in rural areas of developing countries, is risky, affected by droughts and floods. Due to poverty and the limited availability of crop insurance, rural households often ...

    2014| Valeria Groppo
  • DIW Roundup 28 / 2014

    Are the Economic Sanctions against Russia Effective?

    The introduced sanctions against Russia, which at the moment are on a level of travel bans and asset freezes against a limited group of individuals and firms, are unlikely to trigger a profound change in Russian foreign policy. This can primarily be attributed to the fact that the economic impact of the sanctions is rather low. However, the current political tensions have had an impact on financial ...

    2014| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Dirk Ulbricht, Georg Wagner
  • DIW Roundup 26 / 2014

    Soldiers and Trauma

    Understanding the risks and consequences of military service in fragile regions is a vital concern facing veterans and policymakers in Germany (and many other nations). Researchers, health professionals, politicians and the news media are actively discussing this contentious topic. A key point in the debate is the psychological well-being of discharged servicemen. The purpose of this column is to offer ...

    2014| Wolfgang Stojetz
  • DIW Roundup 23 / 2014

    Can the Market Stability Reserve Stabilise the EU ETS: Commentators Hedge Their Bets

    In response to an imbalance between the demand and supply of permits within the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the European Commission has proposed the introduction of a Market Stability Reserve (MSR). The MSR represents a quantity based automatic adjustment mechanism, which is designed to tackle the current surplus and introduce a degree of flexibility, allowing the system to respond ...

    2014| William Acworth
  • DIW Roundup 18 / 2014

    The New Growth Debate

    The developed economies of Europe and the United States are slowly recovering from the worldwide financial crisis and the debt crisis in the euro area. How will the economic situation of these countries evolve in the future? Will the developed economies experience high rates of productivity and economic growth or will they have to face stagnation for a long period of time? Various famous economists ...

    2014| Guido Baldi, Patrick Harms
  • DIW Roundup 17 / 2014

    The Bank Capital Debate: Should Fragility Be Reduced?

    The recent financial crisis has exposed the fragility of the banking sector to sudden withdrawals of wholesale funding, asset price declines and market dry-ups. Governments and central banks had to step in to prevent major banks from defaulting. These events led to renewed interest in the question whether the fragility of banks should be tolerated as a necessary, even desirable feature of an efficient ...

    2014| Philipp König, David Pothier
  • DIW Roundup 15 / 2014

    Structural Reforms in the Eurozone: Timing Matters

    Several leading policymakers – from ECB President Mario Draghi to EC President José Manual Barroso – have pushed Eurozone countries to adopt far-reaching structural reforms in labour and product markets in order to foster growth and employment. While there is a broad consensus that structural reforms enhance countries’ growth potential in the long-run, recent research shows that they may have harmful ...

    2014| David Pothier
  • DIW Roundup 9 / 2014

    Early Retirement at 63: Fair Compensation or Pension Giveaway?

    After Easter, Germany's new labor and social affairs minister Andrea Nahles will be presenting the grand coalition's first major reform proposal for parliamentary debate: a bill to improve the benefits provided under the statutory pension system. A centerpiece of the reform package is early retirement on a full pension at 63 for those who have been paying into the state pension system for a long period ...

    2014| Anika Rasner
  • DIW Roundup 7 / 2014

    A Minimum Wage for Germany: What Should We Expect?

    A key component of the coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD signed on November 27 is the adoption of a minimum wage for Germany. Under the agreement, a statutory minimum wage of €8.50 per hour will be introduced across the country starting in 2017. Pushed as a make-or-break issue by the SPD during the negotiations, its introductionfollows months of heated debate about its desirability and ...

    2014| David Pothier
  • DIW Roundup 6 / 2014

    Arts Education: Investment in Education, Opportunity for Social Policy or Instrumentalisation of Culture?

    The role of arts education in our society is increasingly becoming the subject of fierce debate. Is it losing significance, with culture being the victim of austerity policies and young people no longer having time for music school due to increasing stress levels at school? Does the promotion of cultural participation present new opportunities for social policy? Or is culture being instrumentalised ...

    2014| Adrian Hille
  • DIW Roundup 4 / 2014

    Debating the Shortage of Skilled Workers

    It seems to be widely acknowledged that Germany will face a shortage of skilled workers within no more than a few years. However, the extent of the current and future skilled worker shortage is still up for debate among experts. The disagreement begins with the choice of adequate scarcity indicators and model assumptions in long-run projections.

    2014| Nina Neubecker
81 results, from 61
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