Overview publications

Climate change has an effect on all areas of development in poor countries due to its impact on the agricultural sector. The EU development policy should support innovative financial mechanisms for family farms and work towards the opening of product markets and the free movement of people.

By international comparison as well as compared to other EU policies, the EU’s Cohesion Policy evaluation system is far developed and institutionalized. This report analyses the remaining gaps and shortcomings in the Cohesion Policy evaluation system against principles established by the OECD and others and provides recommendations on how to further improve it.

Over the past decade, crises have shaped public perceptions of the EU. Despite the rise of EU-critical parties, the EU and its institutions still enjoy higher levels of trust than national governments.

Measures to promote technological sovereignty vary greatly from country to country and range from the promotion of R&D activities to subsidies for the construction of industrial plants. Systematic forecasting of technology trends would enable policy makers to deal with new technologies at an early stage and adapt policies and institutions.

This paper examines the impact of different cultural values, attitudes and similar attributes on some of the key dimensions of economic performance. It shows a weak correlation between the relative endowment of continental countries with some cultural attributes and the relative performance of their economies.

Europe ‒ once a leader in industrial development and innovation ‒ has lost its competitiveness. Which place will it take in a new world order? Climate protection and the digital transformation will also influence the next era of prosperity. The EU and its member states now want to build a robust, secure, resilient, and sustainable economy. Meanwhile, the US, China, and some emerging economies have overtaken the EU in many international rankings.

This article shows how Facebook interests can be used to construct subnational measures of patience (“the relative valuation of present versus future payoffs”). Differences in patience are closely related to regional student performance in Italy and the United States. The results provide new perspectives on long-standing differences between the countries.

One reason why the European asylum system is overloaded is the lack of opportunities to enter the EU legally. Especially for low-skilled people, the chances of obtaining work visas in Europe are vanishingly small. Here is what the EU and Germany could do about it.

A joint energy and climate action policy could save European countries EUR 248 billion by 2050. This is the result of a study simulating different scenarios. In the worst-case scenario, the total costs could reach EUR 8.629 trillion.

The Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022 marked not only a turning point (Zeitenwende) for German security policy but also for German foreign economic policy. From a European standpoint, the war served as a painful reminder of how economic dependencies can be used as political leverage, bringing the geopolitical dimension of trade relations and economic interdependencies into public focus. In particular, economic ties with the People’s Republic of China are increasingly being scrutinized. The ifo Institute conducted a representative survey with German firms in February 2024 to assess changes in their reliance on Chinese inputs since the outbreak of the war and firms’ plans regarding their supply relationships with China.