News Archive

The latest issue of the EconPol Newsletter has just been published. It features several new Policy Briefs and the latest Reports on the integration of Mercosur in the global economy. In the Expert Opinion Clemes Fuest discusses the four-day work week and in the new EconPol Forum deals with reforms of the EU economic governance.

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.

Narratives about immigrants matter for both natives and immigrants because narratives shape attitudes, political outcomes, and perceptions of discrimination. A recent and growing literature has shown that media narratives influence how people think and act as well as that specific framing of immigration matters for how migrants are perceived. However, no study has examined narratives about immigrants in a systematic way. Germany also features a rich and diverse landscape of regional newspapers, opening up the possibility to link immigrant narratives to specific local conditions.

Research funding via the tax system has a positive effect on investment in innovation projects. This is the finding of a metastudy conducted by the ifo Institute that summarizes findings on quantitative evaluation studies in Europe, Japan, Canada, China, Australia, and the United States. In the study, success was most evident in those countries that incentivized research and development expenditure through the tax system, for example by offering tax credits or special depreciation options for material or personnel costs.

Experience with European fiscal rules has shown that European rules cannot prevent member states from accumulating high debt levels if they want to. The fact that the ECB increasingly positions itself as a fiscal bailout mechanism implies that the risk of short-term fiscal crises due to a collapse of confidence in capital market declines. But this comes at the cost of further weakening incentives for fiscal discipline. A reform of economic governance should place emphasis on enhancing fiscal discipline and responsibility.