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Is this really the ‘most dangerous man in Germany’?IWHThe Spectator, August 23, 2026
This study provides new evidence on the impact of the EU Cohesion Policy on income growth in less developed regions. Our panel includes data from all European regions for the years 1989-2020. Using a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, we model treatment dynamics by applying a random effects estimator. Based on digitized historical data, we precisely replicate the policy rule and correctly classify the regions’ eligibility status. Results show that the policy has a moderate positive effect on GDP per capita growth in the targeted regions.
We investigate whether a change in political leadership affects health outcomes. To do so, we exploit turnover elections that move partisan individuals into and out of alignment with the party of the President. We document that the lack of political alignment has a negative, immediate, and long-lasting effect on health. We do not find any evidence that our results can be explained by other confounding trends or by changes in economic outcomes or other economic policies. Further results suggest that political sentiments and social isolation are important potential mechanisms in this setting and that lack of political representation affects the mental health of individuals.
Based on a sufficient statistics approach, we show how the state of technology of European industries relative to the rest of the world can be empirically assessed in a way that is simple in terms of computation, parsimonious in terms of data requirements, but still comprehensive in terms of information. The lack of systematic cross-industry correlation between export specialization and technological advantage suggests that standard measures of revealed comparative advantage only imperfectly capture a country’s technological prowess due to the concurrent influences of factor prices, market size, markups, firm selection and market share reallocation. These findings offer policy insights relevant to the EU’s external competitiveness debate, echoing several recommendations from the Draghi report. Achieving export specialization in key sectors requires more than just technological superiority.
While the drastic physical impacts of climate change and related natural hazards are increasingly apparent, little is known about the long-term behavioral consequences of climate change-related experiences. Psychological evidence suggests that climate change (CC)-related experiences induce people to make more climate-friendly choices. Building on Upper Echelons Theory and relevant psychological literature, we investigate whether early-life natural hazard experiences of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are associated with more climate-friendly policies during their tenure. Our sample covers decisions taken between 1991 and 2018 by 447 US-born CEOs. While we observe an effect of hazard experiences on climate policies, we do not observe the same effect when focusing only on CC-related experiences. This result is robust across different measures of corporate climate performance.
I estimate management opposition to unions in terms of hiring discrimination in the German labor market. By sending 13,000 fictitious job applications, revealing union membership in the CV and pro-union sentiment via social media accounts, I provide evidence for hiring discrimination against union supporters. Callback rates are on average 15% lower for union members. Discrimination is strongest in the presence of a high sectoral share of union members and large firm size. I further explore variation in regional and sectoral strike intensity over time and find suggestive evidence that discrimination increases if a sector is exposed to an intense strike. Discrimination is positively associated with the sectoral share of firms that voluntarily orientate wages to collective agreements. These results indicate that hiring discrimination can be explained by union threat effects.
This paper examines the macroeconomic and distributional effects of the European Union’s transition to Net Zero emissions through a gradually increasing carbon tax. I develop a New Keynesian Environmental DSGE model with two household types and distinct energy and non-energy sectors. Five alternative uses of carbon tax revenues are considered: equal transfers to households, targeted transfers to Hand-to-Mouth households, subsidies to green energy firms, and reductions in labor and capital income taxes. In the absence of technological progress, the carbon tax policy induces a persistent increase in energy prices and a reduction in GDP, investment, and consumption. Headline inflation falls below zero in the medium run, reflecting weaker aggregate demand. Distributional outcomes vary significantly depending on the implemented revenue recycling scheme: targeted transfers are the most progressive but entail larger macroeconomic costs, while subsidies and tax cuts mitigate output and investment losses but are less effective in narrowing the consumption gap. A limited foresight scenario, in which agents learn about policy targets sequentially, generates more volatile adjustment paths and temporary inflationary spikes around announcements, but long-run outcomes remain close to the baseline.
Die Projektgruppe Gemeinschaftsdiagnose prognostiziert für das Jahr 2025 einen leichten Zuwachs des Bruttoinlandsprodukts in Deutschland um 0,2 %. Im weiteren Prognosezeitraum stimuliert die expansive Finanzpolitik die Konjunktur. Die Institute prognostizieren für die kommenden beiden Jahre Expansionsraten von 1,3 % und 1,4 %. Strukturelle Probleme wie abnehmende Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und der demografische Wandel bleiben bestehen. Um Wachstumsperspektiven für die deutsche Wirtschaft zu schaffen, bedarf es einer umfangreichen Reformpolitik. Zur Orientierung präsentieren die Institute einen Zwölf-Punkte-Kompass für den Herbst der Reformen.
We examine how institutional saving mechanisms influence retirement saving decisions under bounded rationality and income risk. Using a life-cycle experiment with habit formation and loss aversion, we test mandatory and voluntary binding savings under deterministic and stochastic income. Voluntary commitment improves saving performance only when income is predictable; under uncertainty, it fails to improve performance. Mandatory savings do not raise total saving, as participants reduce voluntary contributions. These results emphasize the role of income smoothing in enabling behavioral interventions to improve long-term financial outcomes.
This paper examines the impact of climate risks on the debt structure of a sample of U.S. firms from 2002 through 2020. Climate risks—mainly physical, regulatory, and transition risks—are associated with a concentrated debt structure for the affected firms. However, when climate risks propagate through the channels of expected bankruptcy costs and sustainability, they are associated with a more diversified debt structure. Additionally, climate risks asymmetrically impact the relationship between access to finance and debt structure. Results from a quasi-natural experiment reaffirm the impact of climate risks on debt structure.
Climate policy design must balance emissions mitigation with concerns for fairness, particularly as climate change disproportionately affects the poorest households within and across countries. Integrated Assessment Models used for global climate policy evaluation have so far typically not considered inequality effects within countries. To fill this gap, we develop a global Integrated Assessment Model representing national economies and subnational income, mitigation cost, and climate damage distribution and assess a range of climate policy schemes with varying levels of effort sharing across countries and households. The schemes are consistent with limiting temperature increases to 2 °C and account for the possibility to use carbon tax revenues to address distributional effects within and between countries. We find that carbon taxation with redistribution improves global welfare and reduces inequality, with the most substantial gains achieved under uniform taxation paired with global per capita transfers. A Loss and Damage mechanism offers significant welfare improvements in vulnerable countries while requiring only a modest share of global carbon revenues in the medium term. The poorest households within all countries may benefit from the transfer scheme, in particular when some redistribution is made at the country level. Our findings underscore the potential for climate policy to advance both environmental and social goals, provided revenue recycling mechanisms are effectively implemented. In particular, they demonstrate the feasibility of a welfare improving global climate policy involving limited international redistribution.
