Overview publications

Workers’ skills are essential to their success on the labor market. However, the empirical evidence on the economic impact of higher skills is still limited due to how skills are measured. In this article, the authors develop novel measures of workers’ skills that are comprehensive, highly detailed, and directly relevant to the labor market. To this end, they leverage the characteristics of the German apprenticeship system, which offers three main advantages for measuring skills and analyzing their labor market potential.

The 30th anniversary of the European Single Market provides an opportunity to celebrate its successes and review what is yet to be achieved. In the future, the European Single Market will play a decisive role in setting a framework of reliable social standards and common goals. It will ensure Europe’s resilience by helping companies adapt their supply chains to future risks and find new business opportunities. The concrete measures of social policy will be left to the member states.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit Germany hard in 2020. Driven by the need to limit close contact and the resulting strict lockdown measures, economic activity fell sharply. To counter the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the German government introduced several policy measures. While the macroeconomic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is well documented, evidence on the distributional impact on household income at the micro level is more limited. Our analysis shows that German households experienced a loss of over 3 percent of market income in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The number of migrants is continuously increasing worldwide. One in 30 people is a migrant, which amounts to 3.6 percent of the world’s population. This article presents the case of Poland, a country with 12.5 percent of its population living abroad. Many of them still have Polish citizenship and thus the right to vote in Poland. It finds that, the large-scale emigration of young and educated voters causes a negative shift in left-wing voting while there is a substantial increase in right-wing voting with higher emigration. More generally, this effect will depend on the selection of migrants and their voting preferences. Based on this, countries might also want to apply different policies to steer the wheel in either direction.

In electricity markets, market power is typically measured by the difference between observed offers and underlying marginal (variable) cost of power production. Therefore, marginal cost estimates should be as accurate as possible to ensure unbiased measurement of market power and welfare-improving mitigation thereof. However, cost components and power plant characteristics are private information and firms have an incentive to overstate costs. Instead, system operators thus proxy marginal cost of power plants from past offers of the respective plant, which leaves room for strategic manipulation by firms. This article tests the accuracy of this best-practice benchmark approach against multiple suggested alternative methods. The results of our empirical analysis reveal a low estimation accuracy of the currently applied benchmark approach. All suggested alternative approaches deliver more precise estimates.

Germany is a strong industrial nation with manufacturing contributing significantly to its economy. The country faces challenges including decarbonization, digitalization, and increased competition, especially in the automotive sector. Germany's automotive industry is vital to its economy, contributing around 9% of GDP and employing over 2.5 million people. The industry must adapt to these changes, requiring a skilled workforce with a focus on green technologies. The country has done a remarkable job in greening its manufacturing and green skills are quickly gaining prominence. After all, Germany is still a hotbed of innovation, but cannot afford to become complacent.

Sub-Saharan Africa ranks as one of the world’s poorest regions. The causes of this are exceptionally complex, with political instability, lack of security, low levels of education, poor access to infrastructure and lack of integration into global trade networks as the leading explanations, among others. In recent decades, economists and agricultural development experts have been looking for ways to increase agricultural productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa through improved seeds, fertilisers and more modern farming technologies. This article looks at the measures in question, what has been done so far, and how scientists assess the effectiveness of these measures on agricultural productivity and poverty reduction. Finally, we present concrete recommendations.

Europe is facing a whole new set of challenges: The cost of living is rising, war is on our doorstep, and an environmental turnaround is needed. How should the EU framework for economic governance change to make Europe stronger, more sustainable and more resilient? The European Commission has recently developed guidelines for a reformed economic governance framework. In March 2023, the European Council endorsed these guidelines. They aim at strengthening national ownership and facilitating the enforcement of projects. At the same time, they are intended to enable strategic investments and set a framework to reduce the high level of public debt. However, such economic policy coordination efforts at the EU level and the individual governance reform proposals open new debates. To what extent do they correspond to the real needs and interests of the EU? And do they take into account country-specific economic, structural and social problems of the member states?

A strong middle class is important for political stability in democracies and can be an anchor against political extremism. With their consumption and labor input, middle class households make a significant contribution to economic growth and a prosperous society. With their taxes and other levies, the middle-income groups also contribute significantly to revenues and thus to the government budgets and the financing of EU welfare states. At the same time, the middle class has come under pressure in many countries in recent years. In many European countries, it is therefore questionable whether and to what extent the middle class will be able to bear further fiscal and financial burdens during the current crises and to meet the state’s additional financing needs to cope with major challenges such as climate change, the energy transition, the security policy shift, or demographic change.

Innovations form the backbone of sustained economic growth and, as such, they play a key role in safeguarding prosperity. Governments, aware of this, invest heavily in public research at universities and research institutes, and strive to create ideal conditions for private sector research and development (R&D), usually through specific R&D tax credit schemes or direct funding.