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DIW Roundup 110 / 2017
In many advanced economies, there has been a declining trend in interest rates over the past thirty years. Since the financial crisis, interest rates have remained particularly low. Though a decrease in inflation explains part of the fall in nominal interest rates, there is also a clear downtrend in real interest rates. Against this backdrop, a debate has emerged over the factors that might have contributed ...
2017| Guido Baldi, Patrick Harms
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Cluster-Seminar Öffentliche Finanzen und Lebenslagen
This paper examines the effects of a substantial change in publicly funded paid parental leave in Germany on child development and socio-economic development gaps at age 6. For children born before January 1, 2007, parental leave benefits were means-tested and paid for up to 24 months after childbirth. Thereafter, parental leave benefits were earnings-related and only paid for up to 14...
01.02.2017| Mathias Huebener
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DIW Roundup 108 / 2017
The term natural (or neutral) real interest rate refers to the equilibrium value of the real interest rate. As this equilibrium is usually conceived as a situation where inflationary or deflationary pressures have abated, the natural real interest rate is a key concept for central banks seeking to stabilize the general price level or targeting the rate of inflation. The present roundup provides a brief ...
2017| Philipp König, Dmitry Chervyakov
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Event
Almost ten years after the crisis, the financial sector is still in the midst of a far-reaching transformational process. The macroeconomic environment and regulatory frameworks are changing profoundly and fast, whereas new technologies challenge established players – both from the public and private sector – as never before. These developments and their implications for the financial...
23.05.2017
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Data Documentation 86 / 2016
This paper documents methodology underlying the construction of the integrated data base for our study on “Wer trägt die Steuerlast in Deutschland? – Verteilungswirkungen des deutschen Steuer- und Transfersystems” (Who bears the tax burden in Germany? – Distributional Analyses of the German tax and transfer system). Financial support from the Hans Böckler Stiftung for the project is gratefully acknowledged. ...
2016| Stefan Bach, Martin Beznoska, Viktor Steiner
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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