May 2022 marked the 90th anniversary of the end of Heinrich Brüning’s term as Reich Chancellor. To this day, the economic effects of Brüning’s extreme austerity measures remain unclear. However, new data and calculations have made an initial quantification of the economic consequences of Brüning’s policies possible. An analysis based on a time series model illustrates how the Weimar Republic’s economy ...
Credit decisions play an important role for the economic wellbeing of households. However, the complexity of products and varying price information display makes it hard for consumers to navigate this field. Empirical evidence has important implications for consumer protection policies, as many people fail to make optimal choices for themselves and struggle to understand credit cost information. Presenting ...
We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people’s mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health, self-employed men displayed no significant changes up to early 2021. Financial losses are important in explaining these ...
BLOG Overview Note on the graphs Explanations on share of renewable energy in the electricity sector Why "traffic light"? Energy targets of the German government - and what has been achieved The traffic light coalition is history - but it has left its mark on energy policy. The traffic light coalition set out to bring new momentum to the energy transition and has set itself a number of specific ...
Early retirement options are usually targeted at employees at risk of not reaching their regular retirement age inemployment. An important at-risk group comprises older employees who have worked in demanding jobs formany years. This group may be particularly negatively affected by the abolition of early retirement options. Tomeasure differences in labor market reactions of employees in low- and high-demand ...
Humans possess a need for social contact. Satisfaction of this need benefits well-being, whereas deprivation is detrimental. However, how much contact people desire is not universal, and evidence is mixed on individual differences in the association between contact and well-being. This preregistered longitudinal study (N = 190) examined changes in social contact and well-being (life satisfaction, depressivity/anxiety) ...
This paper revives the question of whether a temporary VAT change is an adequate instrument for crisis stabilization. In empirical assessments, we find that durable goods consumption fluctuates strongly over the business cycle and that VAT rate changes affect durable goods in particular. Therefore, we build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model that is capable of addressing this major ...
