Newsletter February 2019

How do macroeconomics and innovation policy interact? This question was discussed by international scholars and policy-makers at the FRAME Final Policy Conference in London on 18 and 19 February 2019. During the conference, the project participants presented the key results and discussed the related policy conclusions of the EU Horizon 2020 project FRAME (Framework for the Analysis of Research and Adoption Activities and their Macroeconomic Effects) with different end users of the project’s research results.

A group of young economists from the ZEW Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management” participated in the Young Scientists Workshop organised by the Chapter of Environmental and Resource Economists (Ausschuss für Umwelt- und Ressourcenökonomie, AURö) of the Verein für Socialpolitik (VfS, German Economic Association). At the workshop held at the University of Kassel, a team of researchers from ZEW presented their findings to an audience of economic professionals.

Three Years After the Paris Agreement – Where Do We Stand in International Climate Policy? This is the topic of Professor Martin Kesternich, deputy head of the ZEW Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management”, in his lecture on 12 March 2019 at the University of Mannheim. He was invited to give this speech by the bdvb University Group Mannheim.

Power and decision-making authorities concerning the European tax system are distributed among various institutions. In their own way, they influence the design of a common European tax system and are equally faced with the challenge of taking national tax policies into account. In a lecture organised as part of the First-Hand Information on Economic Policy series at ZEW, Professor Ferdinand Kirchhof, former Vice-President of the Federal Constitutional Court, addressed this complex relationship between the different actors of tax policy in a talk on 14 February 2019 in Mannheim.

With the education initiative “DigitalPakt Schule”, which promotes the development of digital skills among school students, policymakers are aiming to provide schools across Germany with digital technologies over the course of the next five years. In total, 5.5 billion euros have been earmarked for this purpose. ZEW education economist Friedhelm Pfeiffer explains why equipping schools with digital technologies is crucial and why money alone doesn’t help.

In 2019, ZEW launches seven new projects as part of the international research programme “Strengthening Efficiency and Competitiveness in the European Knowledge Economies” (SEEK). In these projects ZEW researchers will analyse the specific aspects of European economic development and shed light on the conditions for intelligent, sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

2019 is a year of great importance for Europe. Britain will leave the EU in March; elections to the European Parliament will be held in May; and in October, new EU Commissioners and a new head of the ECB will take office. The budget for 2021–27 is being negotiated this year, and many important EU bodies and institutions will be reconstituted. In this way, the coming months will significantly impact the course charted by the European ship of state over the next decade.

How to create affordable living space? By which way to minimise the emergence of fake news? How to form educational systems that do not discriminate and have equal opportunities for anyone and how to strengthen the labour market for refugees? Those are only some of the future questions, being approached in 2019 by schools in the south-west of Germany in Germany’s biggest economical school competition YES! – Young Economic Summit. Eleven teams from Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Saarland are working on ideas and solutions, starting in February. The teams are being accompanied by researchers of ZEW.

ZEW is pleased to announce its 21st ZEW Summer Workshop in July 2019. This year’s workshop will cover recent topics and methods adopted in empirical public economics. A particular focus will be on causal inference as well as structural methods in public policy evaluations. The ZEW Summer Workshop provides a forum for discussion between doctoral students and established experts in the field. Doctoral students and postdocs who have completed their thesis within the last three years are encouraged to apply. Interested researchers should submit a full paper version (preliminary versions are welcome) and a CV in PDF format to summerworkshop2019@zew.de no later than 15 April 2019. At the end of the workshop, the presenter of the best paper at the ZEW Summer Workshop will be awarded the Heinz König Young Scholar Award.

The ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, the Aix-Marseille School of Economics (AMSE), the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), and the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis (RCEA) are pleased to announce the fourth joint workshop on spatial dimensions of the labour market in Marseille, France, on 11 and 12 July 2019. The objective of the workshop is to bring together frontier researchers from the areas of labour economics, regional economics, geography, and other related fields for in-depth discussions. The special focus is on the causes and consequences of agglomeration effects, and on local labour markets. Theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented contributions are welcome. Please submit an extended abstract (about 800 words) or a full draft paper no later than 31 March 2019 to SDLM2019@amse-aixmarseille.fr.

How does the future social security system in Germany have to be designed in order to be sustainable? Current discussions on the welfare state and long-term demographic developments underline the need to address this issue. Dr. Tabea Bucher-Koenen, head of the ZEW Research Department “International Finance and Financial Management”, has been appointed as an expert advisor to the newly established commission of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA) on questions regarding the future of social security systems in Germany.

A team of researchers from ZEW, the University of Mannheim, École Polytechnique in Paris and Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan surveyed members of the German Bundestag, Italian Camera dei Deputati and Senato della Repubblica as well as members of the French Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat. A total of 328 members of parliament (MPs) from three countries participated in the survey conducted in autumn 2018. The results of this survey, presented in Brussels today, demonstrate that French, Italian and German MPs are open to granting the EU more competencies in the fields of defense and immigration policy.

According to the most recent survey for February (6–21 February 2019), the expectations regarding the Chinese economy have risen by 4.8 points to a reading of minus 13.5 points (January 2019: minus 18.3 points). Despite this renewed increase, the CEP Indicator, which is based on the China Economic Panel and reflects the expectations of international financial market experts regarding China’s macroeconomic development over the coming twelve months, is still in negative territory and remains well below the long-term average of 2.4 points.

Hate crime in Germany has increased significantly in the wake of the large influx of asylum seekers in the past years. Some regions have, however, seen a far greater increase in hate crimes against asylum seekers than others. This rise in hate crime is, however, not only driven by the number of refugees moving to a specific region. Regions that saw the arrival of a great number of asylum seekers and that previously had only a low share of foreign-born inhabitants have experienced the highest increase. What is more, the probability of becoming a victim of hate crime in East Germany is ten times greater than in West Germany.

This is the result of a study conducted by ZEW in cooperation with researchers from the Goethe University Frankfurt.

According to calculations by the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden, the surplus of the federal government, the states, municipalities and social security funds in 2018 amounted to 58 billion euros. Professor Friedrich Heinemann, head of the “Corporate Taxation and Public Finance” Research Department at ZEW, comments on this matter.

The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany recorded an increase of 1.6 points in February 2019, and now stands at minus 13.4 points. Although the indicator has improved slightly, it is still in negative territory and remains well below the long-term average of 22.4 points. The assessment of the current economic situation in Germany once again decreased considerably in February, with the corresponding indicator falling by 12.6 points to a level of 15.0 points.

The prices for European emission allowances (EUAs) have tripled over the course of 2018 and have reached their highest level in ten years, with prices well above 20 euros per tonne of CO₂. A central reason for this rapid surge in EUA prices are the planned reforms to the EU emissions trading system adopted at the beginning of 2018, imposing a stronger reduction of newly issued emission certificates per year from 2020 onwards and allowing for the deletion of surplus certificates from the so-called market stability reserve. This is the result of the latest ZEW Energy Market Barometer, a survey carried out by ZEW among energy market experts.

The European Commission has blocked the proposed rail merger deal between the German company Siemens and the French group Alstom due to competition concerns in the markets for railway signalling systems and high-speed trains. The president of ZEW and chairman of the German Monopolies Commission, Professor Achim Wambach, comments on this matter.

On 4 February 2019, the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Christian Hirte, presented the award for the 2018 YES! – Young Economic Summit to the winning team. How can we combat child poverty and support children and adolescents in the best possible way? This question was tackled by the YES! team of Fritz Erler Schule in Pforzheim with the support of ZEW researcher Dr. Holger Stichnoth, deputy head of the ZEW Research Department “Social Policy and Redistribution”.

For their idea “High Five – Five Ways to Make a Change” the student team won the vote for the best solution of the 2018 YES! – Young Economic Summit. The five motivated students have now been honoured with the 2018 YES! Award at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Berlin.

Firms in Germany’s information economy kicked off 2019 in a slightly negative mood. The ZEW sentiment indicator illustrates this for the sector. Compared to the previous quarter, the indicator decreased by 4.8 points, setting the mark to a reading of 66.4 points in the fourth quarter of 2018. However, a cause for greater concern is missing as the indicator shows that the majority of companies in the information economy continue to assess the economic situation positively. The ZEW Economic Sentiment Indicator is the result of a survey among companies in the German information economy, conducted by ZEW in December 2018.

A hotel’s ranking on an online travel agent is often decisive for which hotels are booked online – and which are not. However, not every position and recommendation on platforms like Booking.com and Expedia is necessarily in the interest of the users. For example, hotels get worse positions in the recommended search results, if they offer lower prices on other platforms or on the hotels’ own website. This is the result of a study conducted by ZEW in cooperation with researchers from Télécom ParisTech and the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).

Our publications are available to download in PDF format. PDF files can be viewed using, among others, Acrobat Reader, which you can download for free at https://acrobat. adobe. com/us/en/acrobat/pdf-reader. html

Sebastian Blesse, Massimo Bordignon, Pierre C. Boyer, Piergiorgio Carapella, Friedrich Heinemann, Eckhard Janeba and Anasuya Raj
United We Stand? – Survey of French, German and Italian Parliamentarians on EU and EMU Reforms

Horst Entorf; Martin Lange
Refugees Welcome? Understanding the Regional Heterogeneity of Anti-Foreigner Hate Crimes in Germany

Roland Kube, Kathrine von Graevenitz, Andreas Löschel, Philipp Massier
Do Voluntary Environmental Programs Reduce Emissions? EMAS in the German Manufacturing Sector

Nikolas Wölfing
Forward Trading and Collusion in Supply Functions

Rainer Bräutigam, Christopher Ludwig, and Christoph Spengel
Studie zur Steuervermeidung von Konzernen weist gravierende methodische Mängel auf (Report on Effective Tax Rates Has Severe Methodological Shortcomings)

Christoph Spengel, Katharina Nicolay, Ann-Catherin Werner, Marcel Olbert, Daniela Steinbrenner, Frank Schmidt, and Thomas Wolf
Steuerlicher Digitalisierungsindex 2018 (Digital Tax Index 2018)

2019 Data Report on Innovation Behaviour of Saxony’s Economy

Efficient Design of Measures to Promote Broadband Infrastructure

Innovation Survey 2019 for Berlin

Innovation Survey 2019 for Brandenburg

Innovation Indicators for the Chemical Industry 2019

Preparing the CIS 2020

Public Procurement and Firm Innovation

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Christian Traxler (Hertie School of Governance, Berlin)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: Thilo Klein (Compass Lexecon, Washington, D.C.)
Location of the event: University of Mannheim

Speaker: Frikk Nesje (Heidelberg University)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: Dr. Fabian Gaessler (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: Dr. Georg von Graevenitz (Queen Mary University of London)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: Andreas Mundt (President of the Bundeskartellamt)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Location of the event: University of Cologne

Speaker: Mirko Paschke (Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure)
Location of the event: University of Mannheim

Podium: Dr. Frederik Eidam (ZEW), Prof. Dr. Friedrich Heinemann (ZEW), Isabelle Job-Bazille, PhD (Group Crédit Agricole, Paris), Lucio Pench (European Commission (DG ECFIN) )
Location of the event: Representation of the State of Baden-Württemberg to the European Union, Brussels

Researcher (Doctoral Student, 100%) for the Junior Research Group “Competition and Innovation“

Picture Credits: press release of 27.02.2019: iStock.com/MichaelUtech, press release of 25.02.2019: iStock.com/csakisti, personalia article of 18.02.2019: BDA, press release of 14.02.2019: iStock.com/kodda, news article of 13.02.2019: iStock.com/francescoch, news article of 07.02.2019: ZBW, press release of 05.02.2019: ZBW
 
All further pictures: ©ZEW