Press releases

A disintegration of the European Union would mean a massive loss of prosperity for the member states, finds a study conducted by the ifo Institute and EconPol Europe. Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita would fall by almost 9 percent in Ireland, by 5.2 percent in Germany, by 7.7 percent in the Netherlands, and by 10.2 percent in Belgium. France and Italy would each lose 4.1 percent. Smaller economies such as Malta (19.4 percent), Luxembourg (18.1 percent), and Estonia (11.8 percent) would be hit the hardest.

Tax relief for home maintenance services is not an effective means of tackling tax evasion. In Germany, it would cost the government a great deal of money while only marginally improving tax compliance. This is the finding of a survey of just under 2,000 private households in Germany by the Ludwig Erhard ifo Center for Social Market Economy and Institutional Economics.

One-fifth of the refugees who have settled in Germany after fleeing Ukraine report that they have found employment. This is a finding from a survey the ifo Institute conducted among 1,461 Ukrainian refugees for the EconPol Europe research network. Of those employed, over half say they are working below their formal qualifications. “The willingness of Ukrainian refugees to work is very high. Only very few are not interested in finding a job,” says ifo researcher Tetyana Panchenko.

Older employees can catch up on digital skills through appropriate training. This is shown in a new study by the EconPol research network, which examines these skills among different age brackets in industrialized countries. Two-thirds of the international differences can be explained by differences in the extent to which countries invest in equipping this group with digital skills.

The vast majority of German companies have taken concrete action to adjust their supply chains since the coronavirus pandemic. This is a finding of an ifo Institute survey of 4,000 companies conducted in June 2022 and published by the EconPol Europe research network. The survey found that 87 percent of manufacturing companies have changed their sourcing strategy in response to supply chain disruptions. In wholesale, the respective share was 76 percent; in retail, it was 63 percent.