New archival evidence on housing rents in Berlin over 1909–1917 is presented. The data are extracted from newspaper announcements and georeferenced. Using hedonic regressions, quality-adjusted rent indices are constructed and employed to analyze the rental dynamics during World War I, when housing market experienced several shocks. The outbreak of the war led to an outflow of men from cities. Toward ...
DIW Berlin’s construction volume calculations: construction industry remains a key pillar of the German economy—need for action in energy-efficient refurbishment and in accommodating refugees The construction industry remains a key pillar of the German economy: buildings worth a total of around 338 billion euros will have been constructed or modernized in Germany by the end of this year—2.7 ...
The construction industry remains a key pillar of the German economy. According to the latest construction volume calculations by DIW Berlin, the value of construction in 2014 and 2015 is forecast to grow far more rapidly than the economy as a whole: by a price-adjusted 3.3 percent and 2.1 percent in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Currently, new residential construction is an important engine for growth ...
The energy transition will require considerable increases in energy efficiency, particularly in residential buildings. Financial support mechanisms, information and adviceprograms and dedicated training and certification of craftsmen are already in place to stimulate energy efficiency investment. Nevertheless, the required annual rate of thermal building refurbishment of around two percent is so far ...
The affordability of housing has become a major topic of discussion in Germany among both social scientists and the public at large. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we provide rent-income ratios over more than two decades and show how they change with households’ disposable needs-adjusted income. We find a substantial increase in the ratios over the 1990s. In the decade that ...
In this paper, the authors construct a unique data set of Internet offer prices for flats in 48 large European cities across 24 countries. The data collected between January and May 2012 from 33 websites, are drawn from Internet advertisements of dwellings. Using the resulting sample of more than 1,000,000 announcements, the authors compute the quality-adjusted city-specific house prices. Based on ...
Since 2007, the European cement and steel sectors have been characterized by substantial surplus production capacity. Hence re-investment in primary production of many materials remains limited and endangers the longer-term economic viability of many plants. Opportunities for innovation and modernization could overcome these challenges. They are linked to new demands for more efficient and lower-carbon ...
We investigate the effect of the physical presence of wind turbines on residential well-being in Germany, using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and a unique novel panel data set on more than 20,000 wind turbines for the time period between 2000 and 2012. Using a Geographical Information System (GIS), we calculate the proximity between households and the nearest wind turbine as ...