News

A ZEW study has shown that over the last few years 13 per cent of young people between the ages of 17 and 19 in Germany are not in employment, education or training – and this figure is on the rise. This is equivalent to 130,000 people in the cohort born in 1990. These young people are not in school, nor do they have regular jobs or stable, long-term friendships. ZEW education economist Dr Friedhelm Pfeiffer discusses the causes and repercussions of this worrying trend and calls for a move away from the current scatter gun approach in government funding aimed at children and young people.

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The latest ZEW Seminar Programme has just been released. From October 2010 to June 2011, ZEW is once again offering a great number of expert-led seminars and symposiums.

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The future is open and uncertain. Philosophers have devoted little attention to this realisation, so banal does it seem. However, according to Immanuel Kant, people do have free will; you may dictate in advance what an individual should do, but you cannot predict what they actually will do (see "The Conflict of the Faculties", 1794, Second Section; I thank Otfried Höffe for the reference). In short, the future is not predictable. There are of course laws of nature, such as gravity. If you throw a ball, for example, you can be fairly certain that it will fall to the ground – unless someone intercepts it (volleyball players, of course, could write a book on this subject).

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From 15 to 17 June 2010, ZEW hosted its Summer Workshop for Young Economist for the twelfth year in a row. This year the event was run by the ZEW Research Department “International Finance and Financial Management”. The focus of the workshop was on “Expectations and Forming Expectations on the Financial Markets”. ZEW received sponsorship for the event from the Stiftung Geld und Währung.

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Dr. Friedrich Heinemann, head of the ZEW Research Department “Corporate Taxation and Public Finance” was granted a professorship by the University of Heidelberg in the subject of economics in July 2010. In his postdoctoral thesis, Heinemann looked at the influences that affect members of parliament when making tax policy decisions. His habilitation lecture addressed the question of to what extent the behaviour of tax payers and benefit recipients is solely driven by self-interest or whether it is also influenced by social norms.

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Tax-oriented Valuation On 22 June 2010, ZEW and the University of Mannheim welcomed 100 guests to this year’s Mannheim Corporate Tax Day. Held on an annual basis, this event provides a forum for prominent speakers from the worlds of science, business and financial administration to address current issues pertaining to national and international corporate taxation. The focus of this year’s conference was on issues of practical relevance relating to tax-oriented valuation.

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Professor Felix Schindler, a researcher in the ZEW Research Department “International Finance and Financial Management”, has been appointed as a junior professor at the Steinbeis Hochschule in Berlin. Professor Schindler will be working at the Centre for Finance, Banking and Real Estate in the School of Management and Innovation. Schindler’s research interests are in the areas of real estate as capital investment and real estate financing.

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The single currency is under immense pressure from the various debt problems in a number of Eurozone countries, having experienced a considerable drop in value compared to the US dollar in recent weeks. Professor Wolfgang Franz, head of the ZEW Research Group “Growth and Business Cycles“, discusses the impact of a weak euro on the German economy and calls for the Eurozone to undertake strict consolidation measures to stabilise the currency. Professor Wolfgang Franz gained his doctorate in economics from the University of Mannheim. After being granted the title of professor in 1981, he accepted a post at the University of Mainz. This was followed by positions at the University of Stuttgart, starting in 1984, and at the University of Konstanz from 1989. Since 1997, Franz has been both president of ZEW in Mannheim and an economics professor at the University of Mannheim. In addition, he has led the ZEW Research Group “Growth and Business Cycles” since September 2007. His research primarily focuses on macroeconomics, labour market research and empirical economic research. Since 2003, Franz has been a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, of which he has served as chair since March 2009.

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The finance minister for Baden-Württemberg, Willi Stächele MdL, recently conducted a fact-finding visit at ZEW. He was accompanied by State Secretary Dr. Stefan Scheffold, Ministerial Director Dr. Gisela Meister-Scheufelen as well as several other high-ranking ministry officials.

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According to some critics, the austerity package passed on 7 June 2010 is a “social impertinence”, involving unrivalled “orgies of austerity at the expense of the poor”. The outrage campaigns and protest marches can now go ahead as planned in their attempts to influence the public’s sense of injustice – a tactic that has been fairly successful thus far. But this raises a number of questions, namely: Where is this supposed social imbalance in the austerity package? And how do the alternative saving measures suggested by the aforementioned critics compare?

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