News

Markets do not come out of thin air, they are created by humans to achieve certain aims. How well a market is equipped to achieve these aims depends largely on the rules that apply there. Market design is dedicated to analysing and optimising markets by designing these rules.

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The coronavirus pandemic has brought on the worst recession in Germany since the Second World War. Many companies have managed to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to government aid. The pandemic is hitting young, less established companies, such as startups, particularly hard.

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According to information provided by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the coronavirus contact-tracing app has been downloaded more than 18 million times. In light of the rise in infection rates, there is hope that the app will facilitate the tracking of chains of infection in the cold winter months ahead and that it will help to control outbreaks of the virus.

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The German Federal Cabinet has adopted a draft law for the introduction of a digital pension platform. An information portal will be set up under the German Pension Authority (Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund) in order to cover all three pillars of old-age provision, namely statutory, occupational, and private. The portal should be able to show how much money you have saved and what monthly pension payments you can expect at retirement. In this interview, ZEW economist Professor Tabea Bucher-Koenen talks about why a digital pension platform is so important.

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At the beginning of August, Sebastian Rausch joined ZEW as the head of the research department of Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management. Following positions at MIT and ETH Zurich, he accepted the post at ZEW along with a professorship in environmental and energy economics at Heidelberg University.

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The coronavirus has hit the world economy hard, with the lockdown having paralysed public life for weeks in many countries. But even with the lockdown easing up, hygiene and distance regulations still make it difficult to work together, shop, and use business services. 

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ZEW’s Research Department “Labour Markets and Human Resources” recently created a new Junior Research Group, “The Integration of Migrants and Attitudes Towards the Welfare State (IMES)”. Its stated goal is to better understand the effects of immigration on the host country and the integration of migrants into the labour market.

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Demographic changes are increasingly being felt in Germany as many companies struggle to find qualified applicants. Nevertheless, many unutilized options exist for easing bottlenecks in the German labour market.

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Policymakers are increasingly relying on behavioural interventions with the aim of improving individual decisions. These interventions have become known as “nudges” following the similarly titled book written by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in 2008. Nudging methods are used, for example, to increase the willingness of individuals to pay taxes. But how effective are these measures in reality?

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By 2030, renewable energy is to cover 65 percent of German energy supply. This is why the German Federal Government is planning to invite tenders for new public funds. In the past, competition for wind energy plant support was low, however. For the state, a lack of competition drives up the costs for renewable energy expansion, because it allows companies to place higher-priced bids.

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