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Economic Bulletin
The cumulative growth rate of the German economy since reunification would have been around two percentage points higher if income inequality had remained constant. This is what simulations using the DIW Macroeconomic Model have shown. They were made under the assumption that the income distribution dynamics would not be influenced by any feedback effects of economic growth. In 2015, Germany’s ...
15.03.2017| Marius Clemens, Stefan Gebauer, Simon Junker
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Interview
Mr. Fichtner, DIW Berlin examined the relationship between rising income inequality and economic growth. Would Germany have higher growth if income inequality had not risen in recent years?
Yes, Germany’s economic growth would actually have been somewhat higher if income inequality had not sharply increased between 1991 and 2015. The German economy showed an unre - alized growth potential of ...
15.03.2017| Ferdinand Fichtner
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Personnel news
Sarah Dahmann, who worked at the department of Socio-Economic Panel until December 2016, has successfully defended her dissertation at Freie Universität zu Berlin.The dissertation with the title „Human Capital Returns to Education – Three Essays on the Causal Effects of Schooling on Skills and Health“ was supervised by Prof. Dr. C. Katharina Spieß (DIW Berlin, Freie Universität ...
14.03.2017
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Report
On Monday, Maurice Obstfeld, IMF chief economist and former economic advisor of Barack Obama, commented on the new IMF-Paper „Labor and product market reforms in advanced economies: fiscal costs, gains, and support” during a DIW Berlin event about „The role of fiscal policy in advancing structural reforms in Europe“. The paper concludes that reforms do not just grow the ...
14.03.2017
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Blog Marcel Fratzscher
Now that Germany’s current-account surplus has reached a record €270 billion ($285 billion), or close to 8.7% of GDP, the ongoing debate about its economic model has intensified. Eurozone politicians and Donald Trump’s administration in the United States are each blaming the other for the economic imbalance; and all are blaming the euro.
Trump’s administration, for its part, ...
07.03.2017| Marcel Fratzscher
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Report
Beside the normal documentation on generated variables, we now for the first time provide 2015 questionnaires (indiviuals and biographical) generated from metadata.
Beside the questions, the documents contain the variable names and labels used in SOEP-Core and SOEPlong as well as the names of the data set containing the data. We published these questionnaires in an English and a German version.
Please ...
06.03.2017
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Interview
Rainer Winkelmann’s research on unemployment and happiness using SOEP data led to his groundbreaking 1998 paper “Why are the unemployed so unhappy?” (written jointly by Liliana Winkelmann), which conclusively demonstrated—for the first time—that unemployment makes people unhappy. It is the most widely cited paper in the history of the SOEP.
Rainer Winkelmann studied economics ...
06.03.2017
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In the media
The op-ed by Marcel Fratzscher was first published on FT.com on February 28, 2017.
The emergence of Martin Schulz as the centre-left Social Democrats’ (SPD) candidate for chancellor has fundamentally altered the dynamics of German politics. It is also changing the debate in Germany on inequality and the future of Europe in ways that will have a significant impact across the continent.
Germany ...
03.03.2017
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Blog Marcel Fratzscher
The op-ed was first published on FT.com on February 28, 2017.
The emergence of Martin Schulz as the centre-left Social Democrats’ (SPD) candidate for chancellor has fundamentally altered the dynamics of German politics. It is also changing the debate in Germany on inequality and the future of Europe in ways that will have a significant impact across the continent.
Germany is regarded ...
03.03.2017| Marcel Fratzscher
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Economic Bulletin
More than just a few politicians and scientists see an imbalance in policy’s primary orientation toward economic goals, especially the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In view of scientific and public discourses on prosperity, this report analyzes how voting-eligible Germans, the electorate, rated the significance of different policy areas in 2013 and again at the beginning of 2017. It is based ...
02.03.2017
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Interview
Mr. Giesselmann, you studied how eligible voters in Germany judge the importance of various policy goals in 2013 and again at the beginning of this year. Which policy goals appeared in your survey?
We asked questions about direct economic aspects, including per capita income as well as indicators of income and wealth. Secondly, we asked about social aspects such as the employment rate, education rate, ...
02.03.2017
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Report
Recently we published an update for the SOEP data 1984-2015 (v32.1).
This was because we found some mistakes in the data sets BIOCOUPLY, BIOMARSY, BFP, and BFPGEN.
At the same time, this version is also available in long-format to facilitate the longitudinal analysis of the data.
Please find more information on our landing page of https://doi.org/10.5684/soep.v32.1.
28.02.2017
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Report
We are happy to present our recent SOEPnewsletter 114, February 2017.
We like to inform about
the changes in the SOEP versions 32 and 32.1 (data 1984-2015),
the first data release of the SOEP Related Study TwinLife
first results of the SOEP User Survey
new SOEP team and SOEP Survey Committee members
and many more.
It may also be of interest to you to read a note on post-truth by Jürgen ...
27.02.2017
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Press Release
DIW study showed: To some extent, drastic savings measures neutralized the effects of structural reform. The countries affected relapsed into recession without having improved their financial picture – a balanced policy mixture would have been better.
The austerity measures and tax increases implemented from 2010 onwards did not reduce sovereign debt in Spain, Portugal and Italy as anticipated. ...
22.02.2017
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Interview
Mr. Engler, Mr. Klein: In 2010, several European countries started implementing austerity measures to reduce their sovereign debt. Of these countries, you studied the southern European countries of Spain, Portugal, and Italy as examples. To what extent was the austerity policy successful there?
Philipp Engler: The austerity measures were not successful. The absolute level of sovereign debt has risen ...
22.02.2017| Philipp Engler, Mathias Klein
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Economic Bulletin
According to the German federal government’s climate protection targets, there will be a continuous reduction of lignite-based electricity well before 2030. Simulations show that the currently authorized lignite mines in eastern Germany would not be fully depleted if the climate protection targets for 2030 were complied with. This makes planning for new mines or the expansion of existing ones ...
13.02.2017| Claudia Kemfert, Pao-Yu Oei, Dorothea Schäfer
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Interview
Mrs. Kemfert, what role will lignite play in the future of Germany’s energy supply?
In the future, lignite will have less of a role in supplying energy in Germany because we want to fulfill the international climate targets in this country. We aspire to an energy transition that has the goal of boosting renewable energy’s share of production to at least 80 percent by 2050. This is ...
13.02.2017| Claudia Kemfert
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Economic Bulletin
A significant rise in Germany’s construction volume is expected for this year and the next, even if the growth is not as pronounced as it was in 2016. According to DIW Berlin’s latest construction volume calculations, the sum of all new construction and building refurbishments will increase in real terms by 1.6 and 2.4 percent in 2017 and 2018, respectively, from a rate of 2.5 percent in ...
13.02.2017| Claus Michelsen
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Report
Jannes Jacobsen, Jana Jaworski, and Lisa Pagel recently joined the SOEP as part of the project Refugee Families in Germany (GeFam).
Jannes completed his master’s degree in Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin in early 2016. His master’s thesis deals with antisemitism and racism, examining these issues in different religions from a comparative perspective. His research interests ...
08.02.2017
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Report
Christoph Halbmeier started to work in February as a SOEP research assistant on the DFG project “Wealth Distribution in Switzerland and Germany: Evidence from Survey Data”. He finished his degree in economics in October of last year at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His master’s thesis analyzed the effects of trade on the labor productivity in German industries. He worked ...
08.02.2017