The Obama administration has repeatedly identified the large-scale build-out of clean, renewable energy infrastructure as a key priority of the United States. The President's calls for a cleaner energy economy are often accompanied by references to other industrialized countries such as Germany,...

This paper analyzes recent macroeconomic developments in the eurozone, particularly in Germany. Several economic indicators are sending signals of a looming German recession. Geopolitical tensions caused by trade disputes between the United States and China, plus the risk of a disorderly Brexit,...

Cyclically induced changes in taxes and government expenditures which tend to stabilise aggregate output are called automatic stabilisers. Using a small macro model, this paper reviews alternative methods of measuring the smoothing power of automatic stabilisers and discusses their relationship...

We investigate the short-term effects of fiscal policy shocks on the German economy following the SVAR approach by Blanchard and Perotti (2002). We find that direct government expenditure shocks increase output and private consumption on impact with low statistical significance, while they...

The German Income Tax Reform 2000, which announced a reduction in income tax rates to be implemented in a series of three stages, was welcomed by the public as a step towards unleashing lurking growth potentials. Nonetheless, in the course of the year 2001 a dispute arose, centering around the...

In this paper we apply conjoint analysis to study the influence of changes in the tax rate and the tax base on the perceived tax burden. Our results show that the majority of individuals do not make rational tax decisions based on the actual tax burden, but rather use simple decision heuristics....

Eine aktuelle Studie des DIW Berlin untersucht die zu erwartenden Effekte auf die Beschäftigungsnachfrage eines bundesweiten Mindestlohns von 7,50 Euro. Da seine Einführung mit einem erheblichen Anstieg der Bruttolöhne im unteren Bereich der Lohnverteilung verbunden wäre, besteht die Gefahr...

Nach langen Jahren stagnierender und sogar rückläufiger Produktionsentwicklung folgt auf 2006 und 2007 auch 2008 eine positive Gesamtbilanz der Bauwirtschaft. Der konjunkturelle Ausblick auf das Jahr 2009 ist allerdings getrübt. Die deutsche Bauproduktion wird preisbereinigt 2009 fast...