News

The COVID-19 pandemic is still massively affecting our everyday life one year on. The public debate focuses on topics such as triage, the prioritisation of vaccination groups and possible privileges for vaccinated people. Professor Alena Buyx, Chair of the German Ethics Council, and ZEW President Professor Achim Wambach discussed the importance of ethical guidance in these challenging times as part of the lecture series “First-Hand Information on Economic Policy” on Wednesday, 14 April 2021. The event was held online and was supported by the ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice.

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The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy congratulates the school team of the Albertus-Magnus-Gymnasium Stuttgart and ZEW Mannheim for winning second place in the YES! school competition 2020. The team, supervised by Professor Nicolas Fugger and Tobias Riehm from ZEW’s Research Department “Market Design”, convinced the jury with their idea “Kitafix – Matching daycare places and children more effectively through an innovative ranking system”. Over the course of the competition, the school students developed an innovative approach to finding a more effective way of allocating childcare places.

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The new state government has been elected and is now preparing to take office. The structural change in the economy, which has picked up considerable pace as a result of the pandemic, will pose a major challenge for policymakers. Dealing with these challenges will determine whether Germany will be able to ensure prosperity in times of change.

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In April 2011, the flagship report of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) was published. The report was hailed at the time as an important impetus for a transformation towards a sustainable world. A recent study by ZEW Mannheim together with the German Agency for the Applied Energy Transition (dena) and researchers from Heidelberg University shows which of the demanded measures have been implemented and how the report is to be assessed in retrospect.

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This year marked the tenth anniversary of the Annual Conference of the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (MaCCI), which was jointly organised by ZEW Mannheim and the University of Mannheim on 11 and 12 March 2021. This was the first time that the conference took place as an online event. With a total of 270 participants and 22 parallel sessions, this was the largest MaCCI conference ever held.

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In February 2021, the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI) presented its annual report to the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel. As part of the lecture series “First-Hand Information on Economic Policy”, Professor Irene Bertschek, head of the ZEW Research Department “Digital Economy” and EFI member, and Rafael Laguna de la Vera, founding director of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIN-D), discussed the EFI report as well as ways to promote disruptive innovations in Germany. The event was supported by the ZEW Sponsors’ Association for Science and Practice and held within the framework of the SEEK research programme.

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The US Nasdaq, or Nasdaq OMX Group since 2008, is the second largest stock exchange in the world with its headquarters in New York. As the first electronic stock exchange, it has attracted in particular innovative technology companies. Still to this day, several hundred high-tech start-ups annually go for a stock market listing on the so-called ‘technology exchange’, whilst new issuances in Germany are predominantly from traditional sectors.

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2015 and 2016 are etched on people’s minds as the years characterised by the so-called ‘refugee crisis’. Over a million people fled war-torn countries and ultimately sought asylum in Germany. Dr. Katrin Sommerfeld discusses in the eighth edition of the #ZEWPodcast ‘Wirtschaft · Forschung · Debatten’/‘Economy · Research · Debates’ what the successful integration of refugees into the German labour market depends on, how successful this integration has already been since 2015, and what impact the coronavirus pandemic is having on the employment of refugees. 

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The German Real Estate Finance Index (DIFI) by ZEW Mannheim and JLL continues its recovery in the first quarter of 2021. Despite the gain, it still remains in the red with a total of minus 14 points (plus 9.5 points compared to the previous quarter). Both the current financial situation and the financing outlook for the forthcoming six months are assessed more positively than at the end of the fiscal year 2020. According to the survey participants, the outlook is bleak for the retail sector, which is struggling due to the lockdown brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. By contrast, there is more of a positive outlook regarding the financing situation for office and hotel properties in the next six months

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‘Exponential growth’ should have been the expression of the year 2020. In the mathematics courses of coming decades, the coronavirus is sure to serve as a prime example of exponential growth. Yet the virus is not the only factor in our lives that exhibits an exponential growth function.

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