The rise of populism continues to shake numerous Western democracies, often leading to exclusionary or authoritarian tendencies (Mudde, 2004). This is evident in events such as the US Capitol storming in January 2021 and the attempted coup in Germany in December 2022. The destabilizing threat to democratic institutions across the EU and the US underscores the importance of understanding populism’s...
We study the relationship between crowding and performance in the active mutual fund industry. Using the equity holdings overlap of 17,364 global funds, we find that funds that crowd into the same stocks underperform passive benchmark funds by 1.4% per year. The negative returns to crowding can at least in part be explained by excess demand for liquidity and the associated discount for holding liquid ...
Despite substantial research on job satisfaction in self-employment, we know little about the specific consequences for the venture when job satisfaction declines after an external shock. Taking the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of an external shock and drawing on a sample of nearly 7,000 self-employed individuals living in Germany, we investigate how declines in job satisfaction are related to investment ...
First study of the relationship between the gender of entrepreneurs and the gender pay gap – Finnish data shows: wage gap in companies owned by women more than two percentage points lower than in companies owned by men – In many service industries, the gender pay gap is close to zero when companies are owned by women In companies owned by women, the earnings gap between female and male employees is ...
This article surveys the measurement of historical wealth and income inequality in Germany. We discuss the underlying data sources, the challenges they pose, and the opportunities they create. We also identify two promising avenues for future research. First, we argue that the geographic granularity of German historical statistics provides researchers with the opportunity to investigate the causes ...
We are excited to welcome the new 2024 cohort of PhD students, with some joining through the Berlin School of Economics (BSoE) and others directly through our program. All of them will conduct their research at DIW Berlin, marking the start of their academic journey with us. We wish them all the best as they embark on the path toward earning their doctorates and look forward to supporting their research ...
On December 5, the Institute and DIW GC celebrated the graduation of 15 of our graduates with a festive ceremony. After an opening speech by Marcel Fratzscher and an inspiring speech by Prof. Dr. Nicolas Ziebarth, Helmut Lütkepohl was also bid farewell to his well-deserved retirement. The Executive Board and Kerstin Bernoth thanked him warmly for his important work in doctoral training and at the GC. ...
This study investigates how actual and anticipated intergenerational wealth transfers (i.e., inter-vivo gifts and inheritances) contribute to social stratification in the transition to homeownership. Utilizing discrete-time survival analysis on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (N=13,018), we find that individuals whose parents were manual workers or service workers are less likely to ...
GC 2024
