Newsletter August 2020

The issue of sustainability has been of great importance for ZEW Mannheim for many years. In 2017, the institute signed the WIN Charter of the State of Baden-Württemberg, thereby committing to economic, ecological and social sustainability. In the recently published sustainability report for 2019, ZEW provides information on the progress the institute has made towards sustainability.
 
“We promote our sustainability goals by following the twelve guiding principles of the WIN Charter and are constantly working on strengthening and optimising this aspect at the institute,” says ZEW Director Thomas Kohl. “Last year, we placed particular emphasis on human rights and employee rights, employee welfare, resources as well as energy and emissions.”

The European Commission’s ban of the planned merger of the Siemens and Alstom train divisions in May 2019 put the issue on the front page: Is the European internal market well equipped to adequately deal with the challenges posed by China’s economy and Chinese companies, such as the railway giant China Railway?

At the beginning of August, Sebastian Rausch joined ZEW Mannheim as the head of the research department of Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management. Following positions at MIT and ETH Zurich, he accepted the post at ZEW along with a professorship in environmental and energy economics at Heidelberg University. In this Q&A, Rausch talks about his work at ZEW and explains how environmental economics can help in the fight against global warming.

The research award “Zukunft der Arbeitswelt” (“The Future of the Working World”) will be conferred for the eighth time by the Volksbank Weinheim Foundation in cooperation with ZEW Mannheim. With the award, the Volksbank Weinheim Stiftung and ZEW aim to honour young economists from the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region. The prizes will be awarded to the best doctoral thesis, endowed with 3,000 euros, and the best master’s thesis, endowed with 2,000 euros. The recipients will have the opportunity to complete a research stay at ZEW. The deadline for submissions is 31 October 2020.

On 1 August 2020, the renowned environmental and energy economist Professor Sebastian Rausch took up his position as head of the Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management” at ZEW Mannheim. “As head of the research department, I look forward to enhancing my research on the design of emissions and energy markets and to contributing to the climate and economic policy debate with my findings,” says Sebastian Rausch.

In the August survey (3–12 August 2020), the CEP indicator fell by 5.6 points to a new level of 26.1 points. The CEP indicator, based on the China Economic Panel (CEP) in cooperation with Fudan University, Shanghai, reflects the economic expectations of international financial market experts for China on a 12-month basis. “The CEP indicator is still quite high, however, and remains well above its historical average of 2.6 points,” says Dr. Michael Schröder, senior researcher in the “International Finance and Financial Management” Research Department at ZEW Mannheim and project leader of the CEP survey.

In August 2020, the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany increased again significantly compared to the previous month, after having declined slightly in July. Expectations are now at 71.5 points, 12.2 points higher than in the previous month. The assessment of the economic situation in Germany has slightly worsened, with the corresponding indicator decreasing 0.4 points to minus 81.3 points in the current August survey.

In light of the changes to organisational processes that businesses have had to make due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many firms have realised that there are more tasks that can be carried out from home than previously expected. In the business-related services sector, more than 50 per cent of companies – and in the manufacturing sector, more than 40 per cent – are reporting such digital learning effects. “The widespread recognition among firms that many more tasks can be performed remotely than previously assumed reinforces the impulse the coronavirus crisis is giving to increasing mobile work.

Because of these new experiences and insights, many companies are planning to use remote work more regularly after the crisis than they did before,” says Dr. Daniel Erdsiek, a researcher in ZEW’s “Digital Economy” Department. About one in three companies had to invest in new technologies in the short term in order to make remote work arrangements available during the crisis. These are the results of a recent representative survey conducted by ZEW Mannheim in June 2020 among approximately 1,800 companies in the information economy and manufacturing industry.

In the second quarter of 2020, the German economy experienced the sharpest drop in its economic output ever recorded by the German Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden since it started its quarterly calculations in 1970. In comparison to the previous quarter, the already low gross domestic product (price, seasonally and calendar adjusted) fell by 10.1 per cent. When compared to the second quarter of 2019, this represents a decrease of 11.7 per cent. Professor Friedrich Heinemann, head of the Research Department “Corporate Taxation and Public Finance” at ZEW Mannheim, comments on this matter.

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

Robert Aue, Maximilian Bach, Julia Heigle, Friedhelm Pfeiffer, Thilo Klein, and Kristina Zapp
The Implication of School Admission Rules for Segregation and Educational Inequality

Marius Berger, Jürgen Egeln and Sandra Gottschalk
Finanzierung von jungen Unternehmen in NRW durch Privatinvestoren (Financing of Young Companies in NRW by Private Investors)

Cross-sectional Evaluation of Support Measures for Innovative Start-ups

Does Volatile Demand Induce Volatile Prices? Evidence from the German Gasoline Market

Effective Levels of Company Taxation within an Enlarged European Union and Related Supporting Services – Update 2020

Willingness to Pay for Human Capital Insurance: Evidence from Germany

In order to support the nationwide containment measures against the coronavirus, ZEW is examining to what extent the events listed here can take place virtually. Individual dates may be postponed. The current status of the events can be found in the ZEW Events Calendar. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our event team at event@zew.de.

Speaker: Danny Yagan (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Speaker: Ulrike Malmendier (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Speaker: Vahagn Jerbashian (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Speaker: Thomas K. Bauer (Ruhr University Bochum) and Dominik Hangartner (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Speaker: Yingni Guo (Northwestern University, Evanston, USA)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Speaker: Tayfun Sönmez (Boston College, USA)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Speaker: Elena Krasnokutskaya (John Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Speaker: Nicholas Bedard (Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada)
Location of the event: Online via ZOOM

Tenure Track Researcher (PhD, 100 %) (f/m/d) for the Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management“

Picture Credits: news article of 24.08.2020: Anna Logue Fotografie/ZEW, news article of 20.08.2020: Anna Logue Fotografie/ZEW, personalia article of 13.08.2020: Anna Logue Fotografie, news article of 12.08.2020: Volksbank Weinheim Stiftung/ZEW, press release of 30.07.2020: Anna Logue Fotografie/ZEW
 
All further pictures: ©ZEW