With Germany's banking sector still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis, public discussion of plans to place toxic assets in one or more bad banks has gained steam in recent weeks. The following paper presents a bad bank plan from the German Institute for Economic Research. The...

Much work awaits the new U.S. president. The U.S. has been financially depletedby the Iraq war, economic programs and necessary financial system restructuringcosts. The current financial crisis requires a government that takes an active hand ineconomic matters; at the same time, however, the...

The Eastern enlargement of the EU was an institutional impetus to the migration potential in Europe. While the overall numbers of migrants from the new member states in the EU15 increased between 2003 and 2007, this increase was distributed unevenly among countries. The proportion of these...

There is no simple solution to the German unemployment dilemma. Neither too high wages, nor unionized central bargaining, nor the evidence of the effects of the welfare state deliver a simple explanation. The East German experience confirms this view. A solution needs to combine flexibility with...

In the information age, an exchange with the media is part of the duties the economics profession has to deliver to educate the public. A key issue is the education of policymakers through the media. It is the silver bullet of policy advice in comparison to commissioned research and face-to-face...

Gutachterliche Stellungnahme im Auftrag des Bundesministeriums für Arbeit und Sozialordnung, Bonn 1999 (97 Seiten).

Report for the High Level Advisory Group on Social and Labour Market Integration of Ethnic Minorities and the European Commission, Bonn 2008 (166 pages)<br><a href="http://www.iza.org/en/webcontent/publications/reports/report_pdfs/iza_report_16de.pdf"><b>[German version]</b></a> (Studie über die soziale Eingliederung und Arbeitsmarktintegration ethnischer Minderheiten)

Migration is an unavoidable aspect of globalization. While full flexibility is politically unfeasible, the paper argues for regulated openness. Migration in the age of globalization should be judged according to the labor market needs of the receiving countries. This would also serve best the...

Ethnic groups tend to agglomerate and assemble, mostly in urban areas. While ethnic clustering is critically debated in societies and the consequences for economic outcomes are under debate in research, the process is not yet well understood. A separate literature has also examined the cultural...