The German Socio-Economic Panel Study is a representative panel study for the German population, collecting data on a broad variety of topics of everyday life, including general well-being, household composition, educational aspirations and educational status, income and occupational biographies, leisure time activities, housing, health, political orientation and more. With its long running panel structure, the breadth of topics and the representative nature of the data, the SOEP has become a central resources for quantitative research in the social sciences in Germany.

Does increased legal infrastructure empower victims to leave abusive relationships? Structural barriers often prevent victims of intimate partner violence from seeking help and leaving their abuser, with two-thirds of female victims in Europe neither reporting incidents to the police nor accessing support services. I study the introduction of the 2002 Violence Protection Act in Germany, which established a structured cooperation framework between women’s shelters, courts, and police. Using newly digitized data on shelter openings from 1970 until today, I classify counties by whether they had support services in place at the time of the reform and combine this with administrative divorce records to examine how the effectiveness of legal protection varies with existing infrastructure. My results show that divorce filings by women increase across all counties following the reform, with more persistent changes in areas lacking shelter infrastructure at the time of the legal change. Contested divorces and those involving children rise only in counties with pre-existing services, suggesting that support infrastructure plays a key role in enabling more complex or constrained exits - even under improved legal protections. These findings align with predictions from a dynamic bargaining model of household decision-making under violence, institutional support, and legal constraints. 

A course by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

In cooperation with DIW Berlin

Researchers are often interested in calculating how variables respond over time to a given stimulus, such as a policy intervention. This is often referred to as an impulse response. The method of local projections offers a convenient approach to investigate such impulse response dynamics.

We study the wage and employment effects of a German place-based policy using a research design that exploits conditionally exogenous EU-wide rules governing the program parameters at the regional level. The place-based program subsidizes investments to create jobs with a subsidy rate that varies across labor market regions. The analysis uses matched data on the universe of establishments and their employees, establishment-level panel data on program participation, and regional scores that generate spatial discontinuities in program eligibility and generosity. These rich data enable us to study the incidence of the place-based program on different groups of individuals. We find that the program helps establishments create jobs that disproportionately benefit younger and less-educated workers. Funded establishments increase their wages but, unlike employment, wage gains do not persist in the long run. Employment effects estimated at the local area level are slightly larger than establishment-level estimates, suggesting limited spillover effects. Using subsidy rates as an instrumental variable for actual subsidies indicates that it costs approximately EUR 25,000 to create a new job in the economically disadvantaged areas targeted by the program.

This study explores the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and workers’ wellbeing and mental health using longitudinal survey data from Germany (2000-2020). We construct a measure of individual exposure to AI technology based on the occupation in which workers in our sample were first employed and explore an event study design and a difference-in-differences approach to compare AI-exposed and non-exposed workers. Before AI became widely available, there is no evidence of differential pre-trends in workers’ well-being and concerns about their economic futures. Since 2015, however, with the increasing adoption of AI in firms across Germany, we find that AI-exposed workers have become less satisfied with their life and job and more concerned about job security and their personal economic situation. However, we find no evidence of a significant impact of AI on workers’ mental health, anxiety, or depression.

The PhD Summer School on Economic Foundations for Energy and Climate Policies is part of a series organised jointly by a consortium of institutions including DIW Berlin, Technical University Berlin, Université Libre de Bruxelles, EUI-Florence School of Regulation, University College London, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. This year, DIW Berlin, TU Berlin, and Université Libre de Bruxelles are hosting the event, titled Decarbonization Investment Under Uncertainty, scheduled for September 15-19 in Berlin.
The main objective of the course is to provide early-stage Economics PhD students with high-level academic training on energy and climate policy instruments using micro-economic methods. This year's focus on decarbonization investments under uncertainty reflects the critical need to understand how uncertainty affects low-carbon technology investments, which is essential for designing effective climate policies and accelerating the energy transition. The program includes lectures on foundational theories and practical insights related to energy transition, combined with interactive elements such as group projects and a policy panel with policymakers. Students will also have the opportunity to pitch their research ideas to senior researchers.
The motivation behind this summer school stems from the pressing need to address the challenges of climate change through informed policy decisions. By equipping participants with advanced knowledge of energy and climate policy, the event aims to support the development of a network of students interested in the theoretical analysis of energy and climate policies, connecting them with top academics in the field. The summer school has a history of engaging students in important discussions surrounding climate economics and policy, fostering dialogue between academics and practitioners. More info about the school, the series, and the application (deadline April 1) can be found here

The Graduate Center of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Warsaw (FES UW) are organizing a joint Summer School for Ph.D. students and post-docs in economics from September 22-26, 2025 in Warsaw.

The distinguished, internationally renowned lecturers will be Prof. Michael McMahon (University of Oxford) and Prof. Dr. Sophia Kazinnik (Stanford University).

The 16th Transatlantic Workshop on the Economics of Crime will be held in Berlin at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) on September 26-27, 2025. The event will be jointly organized by Anna Bindler (DIW Berlin & University of Potsdam) and Christian Traxler (Hertie School).

We aim to bring together researchers from both sides of the Atlantic to present and discuss their work, allowing for an in-depth interaction between those working on the empirical and theoretical analysis of crime and illegal behavior.

The workshop will consist of up to 15-20 contributed papers and two keynote lectures by Paolo Pinotti (Bocconi University) and Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard (NSCR & University of Amsterdam).

This year’s workshop specifically invites contributions highlighting innovative data sources for crime research, as well as studies on crime prevention, victimization and labor markets and crime. Other suggested topics include, among others:

- Social prevention of crime and violence
- White-collar crime
- Economic crises, poverty, inequality & crime
- Law enforcement and judicial decisions
- Social interactions and crime networks
- Discrimination in the justice system
- Social costs of crime
- Re-entry and rehabilitation interventions

We welcome submissions of both junior and senior researchers. To submit a paper, please upload your manuscript (in PDF format) via this link.

Submission deadline is 02 May 2025. Authors of accepted papers will be notified in early June 2025.

The Berlin IO Day is a one-day workshop sponsored by the Berlin Centre for Consumer Policies (BCCP) and supported by the Berlin's leading academic institutions, including DIW Berlin, ESMT Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Technische Universität Berlin. The aim is to create an international forum for high quality research in Industrial Organization in the heart of Berlin, one of Europe's most vibrant and intellectually lively cities.

A face to face interview is something every student will go through at some point in their career. In the academic job market, it is the central process to convince potential employers of your future research prospects. Outside academia the focus is less on research, but performing well in the interview is nonetheless essential to get the job you want. Handling a job interview successfully is not an easy challenge, but the skills needed to present yourself in the best light can be practiced. For this reason, this year the Graduate Center will again offer job marketinterview training in the form of a ‘mock interview’. We will simulate the interview based on a fictive job vacancy in your field of interest. The“selection committee” will consist of at least two senior researchers in your field, e.g. your supervisor and post docs. Moreover, we have invited Sigrid Pearson, an English job interviewcoach. She will assist in preparing your talk during the days before the interview; she will also attend the talks and give detailed feedback on your performance after the simulation. As part of your preparation, we will also ask you to compose a short fictive job ad for the type of job youare planning to apply for (post‐doc position, position in an international organization etc.).

Dec 4: 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

A key question for households, firms, and policy makers is: how is the economy doing now? This masterclass covers state-of-the-art methodologies to construct short-run forecasts -- or “nowcasts” -- of economic activity.