Overview publications

On 1 January 2023, Croatia became the newest member of the Schengen Agreement of the European Union (EU) and also joined the Eurozone. This will not only mean a new currency and the elimination of border controls. It will also mean reductions in barriers to trade between Croatia and other EU member states. The Schengen Agreement and the Eurozone are part of the engine of European integration, namely the reduction of trading costs between the member countries in various dimensions as well as in trade with third countries. This includes the European Customs Union, the European Single Market, the Eurozone, the removal of customs barriers in the Schengen area and the EU’s free trade agreements with third countries.

The financial sector may play a central role in climate change. This is because, ideally, climate policy measures create important incentives for investors throughout the globalized world to redirect their capital in favor of a cleaner production and thus lower emissions. That is why climate policy must consider the link between the real sector and the financial sector. This transition will not happen by itself. It requires targeted financing measures. To make it effective, policymakers need information about what economic activity, and thus what investment, can be considered green or sustainable. The task is to identify and compile relevant data and provide it to investors in a suitable classification, e.g., via an ESG rating or a taxonomy. Our authors in the “Policy Debate of the Hour” discuss to which extent green finance can make the economy greener. They also examine the role the financial sector can play in this transition. Among other things, they shed light on how “green” can be measured and look at the role of climate policy and incentive effects. They also provide recommendations for both economic and climate policy. In our “Economic Policy and its Impact” section, the authors shed light on the question of how teaching evolutionary theory changes students' knowledge and important choices in their life. In “Institutions Across the World” we discuss how policymakers can create incentives for households to follow tax rules when they use household-related services. The section “Big Data-Based Economic Insights” uses a textual analysis to look at remarks made in ECB press conferences.

Our paper quantifies ECB communication on the Governing Council meeting days. The key questions we address are as follows: What are the main communication patterns in the ECB press conference? Do shifts in communication patterns affect stock market volatility on the Governing Council meeting days?

During the recent crises, governments around the world have spent large amounts of public funds to limit the impact of economic downturns on citizens and corporations. The resulting pressure on public funds is highlighting the crucial need to improve tax compliance.

Greater exposure to evolution teaching not only improves students’ knowledge of evolution by the time they graduate from high school, but it also enhances their belief in evolution in adulthood. What is more, the reforms affect high-stakes life decisions, namely the probability of choosing a career in life sciences.

Persistently low interest rates on government debt over past decades have prompted some economists to question the wisdom of fiscal policies that restrict the use of deficits to finance government spending. In the new EconPol Policy Brief Bev Dahlby and Ergete Ferede argue that the widely held view that there is no, or only a low, fiscal cost from debt-financed increases in program spending can be misleading.

The current energy crisis in Europe is bringing about profound changes that can accelerate the transition to a more sustainable and secure energy system. Yet, it is a supply shock of unprecedented scale and complexity, most noticeable in the markets for natural gas, coal, and electricity. Winter promises to be tough - especially for low-income households that use gas for heating and for small and medium-sized industrial companies. Short-term policy measures aim to shield consumers from the effects of the crisis: these include gas and electricity price brakes and energy subsidies for households. At the same time, many governments in the EU are now trying to increase or diversify oil and gas supplies and also accelerate structural change. The articles in the “Policy Debate of the Hour” section of this issue of EconPol Forum examine the causes of the crisis, analyze its effects, critically assess the policies already in place, and propose new short- to medium-term energy policies to better manage it and strengthen the EU’s systemic resilience to energy market volatility.

In October 2021, 136 countries and jurisdictions agreed on the introduction of a global effective minimum tax (OECD 2021). The plan is to impose a minimum tax rate of 15 percent on the global profits of multinational corporations (MNCs). If an MNC’s effective tax burden in a country is less than 15 percent, additional taxes will be collected until the ratio of tax payments to profits reaches a level of 15 percent. This is to affect all MNCs whose global consolidated revenue is at least €750 million.

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered a huge, sudden uptake in work from home, as individuals and organizations responded to contagion fears and government restrictions on commercial and social activities. Over time, it has become evident that the big shift to work from home will endure after the pandemic ends. No other episode in modern history involves such a pronounced and widespread shift in working arrangements in such a compressed time frame.

How successful have efforts been to socially integrate Syrian migrants in Germany? What factors influence social integration? Together with researchers from Harvard and Meta, we address these questions in a new research paper working with de-identified data from Facebook.