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Nicolas Ziebarth receives the “Regionalisierte Versorgungsforschung” Science Award

DIW GC almunus Nicolas Ziebarth was awarded the 2015 “Regionalisierte Versorgungsforschung” Science Award, together with co-author Peter Eibich. Their paper, “Examining the structure of spatial health effects in Germany using Hierarchical Bayes Models,” received the 5,000€ prize. The investigation of Peter Eibich and Nicolas Ziebarth addresses the modeling and estimation ...

Crowding in Public Transport: Who Cares and Why?

Crowding on public transport (PT) is a major issue for commuters around the world. Nevertheless, economists have rarely investigated the causes of crowding discomfort. Furthermore, most evidence on the costs of PT crowding is based on contingent valuation studies. First, this paper assesses discomfort with PT crowding over different density levels, trip durations and across different individuals using ...

Domestic demand driving German economy

DIW Berlin’s economic forecast: GDP growth will remain stable over the next two years – domestic economy benefiting from favorable labor market situation and expenditure on asylum seekers – public sector has surpluses, but margins are tightening The German economy is expected to continue in its upward growth over the next two years: According to the latest economic forecasts from ...

Domestic Demand Drives German Economy

The German economy is expected to grow by 1.7 percent this year, and to maintain this pace in 2016 as well. The rate of growth should slow down slightly (to 1.5 percent) in 2017, but only because the number of working days will be lower due to the timing of public holidays. The global economy is growing at a slower pace than it has been in recent years, but will pick up speed during the forecast period. ...

Germany Economy Growing at Slightly Above-Average Rate: Eight Questions to Simon Junker

"Germany Economy Growing at Slightly Above-Average Rate": Eight Questions to Simon Junker

Mr. Junker, what kind of growth figures are you expecting for the German economy? The growth of the German economy will be slightly above average over the next few quarters. But this is also connected with special factors like higher consumption due to, among other things, the increasing number of refugees. The German economy is expected to grow by about 1.7 percent this year, and will be somewhat ...

Do Parties Matter? Estimating the Effect of Political Power in Multi-Party Systems

When there are more than two parties, policy outcomes are typically the result of a bargaining process. We investigate whether changes in political power for various parties have an effect on tax policies. We use an instrumental variable approach where close elections provide the exogenous variation in our variable of interest: voting power. In order to isolate close elections in a proportional election ...

Voters Prefer More Qualified Mayors, but Does It Matter for Public Finances? Evidence for Germany

This paper studies the importance of politicians’ qualification, in terms of education and experience, for fiscal outcomes. The analysis is based on a large panel for 2031 German municipalities for which we have collected information on municipal budgets as well as the election results and qualification levels of mayoral candidates. We principally use a regression discontinuity design focusing on close ...

Only Conservatives Are Voting in the Rain: Evidence from German Local and State Elections

In this note, we use data from different elections in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia between 1975 and 2010 to show that the Conservatives profit from lower voter turnout at the expense of the Social Democrats. We deal with the endogeneity of voter turnout by using election day rain as an instrumental variable. Our particular contribution is the comparison of municipal and state electio ...

Developing an energy cost indicator for the industry sector (IECIX)

The energy cost burden is communicated as a major competitiveness concern especially by energy intensive industries. This project provides a transparent, up-to-date index of sector-specific industrial unit energy costs. We update official statistical data using information on energy use and fuel prices and provide a fuel-specific breakdown of overall unit energy costs for each manufacturing sector.