Latest Press Releases

At its most recent general assembly, the ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice re-elected Dr. Georg Müller, chief executive at MVV Energie AG, as its chairman. Treasurer Claudia Diem, board member at BW-Bank, and Dr. Ralf Krieger, board member at Freudenberg SE, were re-elected as well. Besides reconfirming these members in their position, the Sponsors’ Association’s general assembly agreed to expand the programme offered to its members.

Greenpay, the project of the secondary school Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium team from Weinheim, Germany, received a unanimous decision at the finals of the “YES! – Young Economic Summit” competition for students in Hamburg on 26 and 27 September 2019, winning this year’s competition. The student group was supervised by economist Carina Fugger from the Research Department “Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management” at ZEW Mannheim. As in the previous years 2017 and 2018, a team mentored by ZEW outshone all other student teams in the Germany-wide competition.

In the 2018 business year, the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim continued its strategic expansion into a competence centre for market and institutional design, which had already begun in 2017. The ZEW Annual Report 2018, which this year is published in a completely new and modern design that includes infographics and a focus on digitisation, provides information on the steps taken to achieve this strategic expansion.

Two high school teams mentored by the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim have won the regional preliminary round of the nationwide high school economic competition YES! – Young Economic Summit and will compete in the grand final in Hamburg in September 2019. The Werner-Heisenberg-Gymnasium from Weinheim and the Engelsburg-Gymnasium from Kassel impressed with their ideas at the regional final at ZEW.

The MS Wissenschaft hoisted its anchor in Berlin on 16 May 2019. In the Science Year 2019, the exhibition ship will travel the world of artificial intelligence. The interactive touch-screen exhibit “Wie Künstliche Intelligenz Sprache und die Welt verstehen lernt” (“How Artificial Intelligence Learns to Understand Language and the World”) of the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, is on board the exhibition ship this year, and will travel 27 German cities until October 2019 before continuing its journey in Austria.

The Leibniz ScienceCampus “Mannheim Taxation” (MaTax), a joint science project of the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, and the University of Mannheim, will receive 1.1 million euros in research funding from the Leibniz Association over a period of four years. This research grant was approved by the Senate of the Leibniz Association at the beginning of April 2019. In addition, the State of Baden-Württemberg will support the ScienceCampus with 0.6 million euros. During the same period, the University of Mannheim and the ZEW will invest a further 2.4 million euros in tax research carried out within the framework of MaTax.

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 Research Department “Social Policy and Redistribution” at the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim. 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.

From now on ZEW will bear the official name “ZEW – Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH Mannheim” (ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research). The name change has been approved by ZEW’s shareholder and has become effective with its registration in the Commercial Register as of 1 January 2019. The new name will soon be integrated into all parts of the institute’s public image.

The Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, has granted two new science prizes. Dr. Dominik Rehse, senior researcher at ZEW, was awarded for the best scientific performance. The prize for the best economic policy advising project went to the ZEW researchers Professor Irene Bertschek, Dr. Jörg Ohnemus, Dr. Thomas Niebel and Dr. Christian Rammer. Both prizes are endowed with 5,000 euros each. The prizes were handed over by Claudia Diem, board member of BW-Bank and member of the ZEW Sponsors’ Association.