What is ZEW?

About ZEW

ZEW was founded in 1990.

ZEW is located in Mannheim.

The State Government of Baden Württemberg supported the launch of ZEW.
This means: The State Government of Baden Württemberg helped found ZEW.
To launch or found a company means: To create a new company.

The full name of ZEW is:
ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

ZEW is part of the Leibniz Association.

The Leibniz Association is a group of research institutes.
We have a very long name.
So, many people call us: ZEW Mannheim.
In short: ZEW.

There are different departments at ZEW. 
Another word for department is unit.

8 units do research.
They are called research units.

3 departments help the research units.
They are called service units.

More than 200 people work at ZEW.

Achim Wambach is the head of ZEW.
He is the president of ZEW.

But he does not do that alone:
He runs ZEW together with Managing Director Thomas Kohl.

What is the goal of ZEW?

ZEW does economic research.

• To help us understand economy.
• To help us understand how the economy will look like in the future.

Where does the money come from?

ZEW receives money

• from the European Commission,
• from ministries and institutions on federal and state level,
• from companies and associations, 
• from the German Research Foundation, 
• from foundations,
• from organisations.

Most of the money comes from federal and state institutions.

The rest comes from other organisations.
Like ministries.
Or the European Commission.
And companies.
When money is collected like this, this is called third-party funding.

The ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice supports ZEW.

What is important to ZEW?

• Open access to scientific research
  This means: Scientific research is for everyone. We want everyone to have information about our research.

• Good scientific work

• Sustainability
  This means: We also think about the future in our work. We want all people to be able to live a good life on our planet. Today and in the future.
  There is more information about this in our sustainability report (in German).

• Knowledge for everyone
  We want everyone to be able to learn from our research.

You can find more information on ZEW and its activities in our Annual Report.
There is no Easy Read version of our Annual Report.