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Building up sufficient capital for old-age provision, poses a challenge to private households. Homeowners can resort to illiquid housing wealth by using home reversion plans or reverse mortgages. While reverse mortgages are common in the USA and the UK, a German market is quasi non-existent. This Policy Report provides evidence on the demand- and supply-side reasons for the absence of a reverse mortgage market in Germany.

Facing a third Covid-19 outbreak in the spring of 2021 a central question for European policymakers is at what point a vaccination campaign has acquired sufficient speed to overcome the increase in infections, so as to justify lifting NPIs at least partially. The authors of this study derive an expression for a critical threshold that is shaped by three factors: First, the mortality risk from a Covid-19 infection increases exponentially with age. Second, the sizes of age cohorts decrease linearly at the top of the population pyramid. And third, vaccination proceeds at an increasing speed.

The functioning of public bureaucracies is considered a principal driver of government effectiveness and state capacity. Surveying more than 900 real-life procurement officials in Finland and Germany on the basis of hypothetical choice experiments the authors of this study find that bureaucratic decision-making is based to a large extent on intrinsic motivation. While bureaucrats lack important career or pay incentives, they have substantial discretion at work.

Thirty years after its foundation, Mercosur’s member countries have little reason to celebrate. On the one hand, trade liberalization within Mercosur in the first years after its foundation have led to an intensification of intra-Mercosur trade and can be regarded as an early success. On the other hand, the transition from a trade agreement to a customs union has failed and deeper integration steps hardly seem feasible.

To mitigate the economic impact of the corona crisis many governments have heavily engaged in counter-cyclical policies contributing to record high deficit and debt levels. Therefore, the more efficient use of public resources will be given special attention by financial markets’ participants.