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German Economy on the Upswing - Global Economy Continues to Grow Moderately

After three years of subdued economic activity, the German economy is on the road to recovery. While the Iran war and erratic U.S. trade policy are weighing on growth, their impact is only moderate. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that U.S. tariffs are unlawful, this does not change the tariff rates imposed on German exports, as the agreement with the European Union is assumed to remain in ...

German economy on a recovery path

Rent Control from Ancient Rome to the Paris Commune: A Historical Context

A shortage of affordable housing can be exacerbated by wars, natural disasters, or rising demand. In response, governments impose rent control, capping rents. This policy has been used on a large scale since World War I and has gained new popularity, with rent brakes introduced in Germany, France, Ireland, and Spain between 2015 and 2023, and with the strengthening of rent control in Austria and the ...

WIMFEH 2026

The annual Workshop for Women in Macroeconomics, Finance and Economic History (WIMFEH) is organized by the DIW Berlin and the University of Bonn. The aim is to bring together female academic researchers and practitioners to promote and exchange ideas in the field of Macroeconomics, Finance, and Economic History.

Sector Coupling Reimagined: Synthesizing Fragmented Perspectives Into a Unified Framework

Sector coupling (SC), the integration of energy vectors and end-use sectors, is increasingly central to the net-zero transition but remains conceptually fragmented. This fragmentation causes modeling inconsistencies, hinders cross-study comparison, and undermines energy policy coordination. We address this gap through a structured mapping of existing definitions, categorizing them along three dimensions, ...

Measurement error models on anonymized georeferenced data

Georeferenced data are often anonymized for data protection reasons. This is done either by aggregating the data into larger spatial units (e.g., higher-level administrative units or grids with larger cell sizes) or by using stochastic methods to deliberately overlay the original coordinates. These methods significantly distort the data and associated variables, making further modeling steps...

Methodological Challenges in Cross-Cohort Comparisons of Educational Achievement

Comparisons of educational achievement across cohorts are frequently used to examine changes in educational performance and to evaluate the impact of societal or educational events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, drawing causal inferences from observational data without strong experimental control remains challenging, as often no single clear methodological approach is universally...

Union Responses to Revenue Shocks: Evidence from Right-to-Work Laws in the US

Unions decide how to allocate their resources to organise new workers and to benefit existing members. While there is a growing literature studying the aggregate effects of shocks to union power, little is known about how individual unions change their behaviour in response to these shocks. We illustrate the importance of accounting for union equilibrium responses when studying the impact of...

Heteroskedastic Structural Vector Autoregressions Identified via Long-Run Restrictions

A central assumption for identifying structural shocks in vector autoregressive (VAR) models via heteroskedasticity is the time-invariance of the impact effects of the shocks. It is shown how that assumption can be tested when long-run restrictions based on the cointegration structure of the variables are available for identifying structural shocks. The importance of performing such tests is illustrated ...

Filling in the Blanks: Augmenting Survey Data Imputation with an External Prior

Multiple imputation of missing values in survey data analysis is a state-of-the-art technique. Typically, methods like multivariate imputation by chained equations (mice, van Buuren 2018) are employed, replacing missing values on a variable-by-variable basis. Generally, the information used for imputation comes from the survey dataset being analysed. Valid analysis results are achieved when the...