Newsletter October 2021

ZEW Mannheim has received the TOTAL E-QUALITY award for the third time, this year with an additional award for diversity. The institute was honoured by the jury for its successful gender equality policy, its well-established structures for implementing gender equality and its ongoing commitment to promoting equal opportunities.

How will the economy develop over the next six months? The ZEW Financial Market Survey has been exploring this question for 30 years by surveying the sentiment and forecasts of German financial market experts on a monthly basis. In the 13th episode of the #ZEWPodcast ‘Wirtschaft · Forschung · Debatten’/‘Economy · Research · Debates’, economists Dr. Michael Schröder and Frank Brückbauer look back on the past 30 years and provide insights into the creation and impact of the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment.

Is the lack of comprehensible sustainability criteria an obstacle to growth in the sustainable finance sector? In which way do policy measures aimed at a sustainable financial market interact with climate policy instruments? Can investors advance sustainable financial investments effectively by exercising their voting rights? Joined by around 80 online participants, four finance experts from academia and business debated the question of whether sustainable finance can ensure climate protection and addressed the most relevant current developments and topics in the field of sustainable finance.

On 22 September 2021, the 90-minute panel discussion was organised by the Sustainable ZEW initiative.

Economic experts expect the euro area economy to develop positively despite the sharp downturn in 2020. The German economy is forecast to grow only at an average rate in the medium term, but the German labour market is expected to perform well above average compared to the rest of the eurozone. This is the result of the business cycle tableaus by ZEW Mannheim and the German daily newspaper, Börsen-Zeitung.

This summer semester, ZEW Mannheim again offered students in the PhD track the opportunity to attend summer courses taught by internationally renowned professors. More than 80 young researchers from ZEW and the University of Mannheim participated in the seven courses, which dealt with cutting-edge topics such as data science, health economics or migration economics. The ZEW Summer Courses are part of the close cooperation in the economics PhD programme of ZEW and the University of Mannheim and are financially supported by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

Digital platforms are an essential part of the digital economy. How do they work and which policy measures or interventions are useful and necessary from the point of view of consumers and the state? The online session hosted by ZEW Mannheim on the economics of digital platforms at the Beijing Humboldt Forum (BHF) on 25 September 2021 shed light on these questions from various perspectives.

In an exciting final of Germany’s largest school competition YES! – Young Economic Summit, the Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium Frankenthal, mentored by ZEW researchers Katia Gallegos Torres and Paul Berbée of the Research Department “Labour Markets and Human Resources”, managed to secure the third place.

ZEW Mannheim is pleased to announce that the annual ZEW Public Finance Conference will take place in Mannheim on 5 and 6 May 2022. This year’s edition focusses on the role of the state in promoting innovation with keynote lectures by John Van Reenen and Danielle Li (both MIT).
 
Submissions relating to the focus of this year’s conference are particularly welcome, though we also encourage submissions from all other areas of public economics and political economy. Please submit your paper via the conference website no later than 18 February 2022. No conference fee will be charged for participants presenting a paper.

Professor Kathrine von Graevenitz has taken up the professorship of economics with a focus on empirical environmental economics at the University of Mannheim on 1 October 2021. The appointment of the economist and deputy head of the ZEW Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management” will further strengthen the intensive dialogue between ZEW Mannheim and the University of Mannheim.

At its meeting on 4 October 2021, the supervisory board of the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim elected Dr. Hans J. Reiter as its new chair. Reiter has been ministerial director and head of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State of Baden-Württemberg since July 2021. Dr. Ralf Krieger, member of the executive board at Freudenberg SE, will continue to serve as vice-chair.

The use of crowdworking platforms by companies in Germany has risen steadily in recent years. “In 2020, 8.3 per cent of companies in the information economy and 6.1 per cent of companies in the manufacturing industry made use of crowdworking,” says Dr. Daniel Erdsiek, a researcher in the “Digital Economy” Department at ZEW Mannheim. “In addition, about one per cent of companies planned to start using crowdworking by the end of 2021.”

The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany decreased in the current October 2021 survey, falling 4.2 points to a new reading of 22.3 points compared to September. This is the fifth time in a row that the indicator has experienced a fall. The assessment of the economic situation in Germany has worsened in the current survey, and currently stands at 21.6 points, 10.3 points lower than in the previous month. This is the first time that the indicator has recorded a decline after its continuous increase between February and September 2021. Compared to the previous month, the outlook for the economic development in the next six months has noticeably deteriorated.

The economic crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the debt levels of corporations and reduced the level of investments. Companies can use both equity and debt capital to finance investments. From a tax perspective, interest payments on debt are generally deductible from the corporate tax base, while costs related to equity are not. This debt-equity bias is a deep-rooted issue in today’s tax system and inhibits equity-financed investments. A recent ZEW policy brief shows that harmonisation at the European level is not suitable for solving the tax-induced distortion.

Instead, the researchers recommend addressing the debt-equity bias on national level, e.g. by implementing a dual income tax.

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

Christoph Spengel, Leonie Fischer, Christopher Ludwig, Jessica Müller, Stefan Weck, and Sarah Winter
Debt-Equity Bias Should Be Addressed on National Rather Than on EU Level

Chiara Belletti, Daniel Erdsiek, Ulrich Laitenberger, and Paola Tubaro
Crowdworking in France and Germany

Annika Havlik, Friedrich Heinemann and Justus Nover
Election Cycles in European Public Procurement

Katrin Hussinger and João N. Carvalho
The Long-Term Effect of Research Grants on the Scientific Output of University Professors

Raphael Müller, Christoph Spengel und Stefan Weck
How Do Investors Value the Publication of Tax Information? Evidence from the European Public Country-By-Country Reporting

Andreas Gulyas, Sebastian Seitz, and Sourav Sinha
Does Pay Transparency Affect the Gender Wage Gap? Evidence From Austria

Michael Kummer, Ulrich Laitenberger, Cyrus E. Rich, Danny R. Hughes, and Turgay Ayer
Healthy Reviews! Online Physician Ratings Reduce Healthcare Interruptions

Irene Bertschek, Holger Bonin, Uwe Cantner, Carolin Häussler, Katharina Hölzle, and Till Requate
Gutachten zu Forschung, Innovation und technologischer Leistungsfähigkeit 2021 (Report on Research, Innovation and Technological Performance 2021)

Bettina Peters, Josefine Diekhof, Hannes Marks, Christoph Grimpe, and Wolfgang Sofka
Machbarkeitsstudie „Technologiemärkte“ (Feasibility Study “Technology Markets”)

Ex-ante Analysis of the Subsidy Program “INVEST – Venture Capital Grant”

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the following event details may be subject to change. 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: Georg Müller (ZEW Sponsors’ Association)
Location of the event: Online

Speaker: Emi Nakamura (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Location of the event: Online

Speaker: Selina Gangl (University of Fribourg, Switzerland)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: Robert Seamans (New York University, USA)
Location of the event: Online

Speaker: Laurent A. Mathevet (New York University, USA)
Location of the event: Online

Speaker: Jing Li (MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, USA)
Location of the event: Online

Speaker: Leonie Wenz (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) e. V.)
Location of the event: Online

Speaker: Peter Haan (German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin))
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: John J. Horton (MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, USA)
Location of the event: Online

Location of the event: Online

Speakers: Jan Ceyssens (DG Fisma, Brussels, and Publications Office of the European Union, Brussels), Martin Hellwig (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn), and Robert Townsend (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: Libertad González (Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain)
Location of the event: University of Mannheim

Speaker: Bastian Krieger (ZEW)
Location of the event: Online

Speakers: Claudia Buch (Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt), Annamaria Lusardi (George Washington University, Washington, D. C., USA), David Leiser (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel), and Martin Weber (University of Mannheim and ZEW)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Speaker: Christian Miege (Thyssenkrupp AG, Essen)
Location of the event: ZEW, Mannheim

Tenure-Track Researcher (f/m/d, 100%) Labour Economics

Picture Credits: news article of 06.10.2021: PantherMediapressmaster, news article of 29.09.2021: YES – Young Economic Summit
All further pictures: ©ZEW