Press releases

Fully 90,000 households in Germany could benefit from a reverse mortgage to boost their retirement income. This is the finding of a study conducted by the EconPol research network. Demographic change is forcing many European citizens to consider a funded pension. With a reverse mortgage, real estate assets can be used to close a pension gap – either in the form of a lump sum payment or as monthly pension payments. This instrument is widely used in the US and the UK but is rare in Germany.

Key priority of German and Finnish public procurement officials is avoiding awarding public contracts to bidders with bad reputation. Yet, their ability to do so may be limited. Officials also dislike procurement outcomes that exceed expected costs or fall short of expected quality a recent EconPol study finds.  "Exceeding the budget in the administration is perceived to be much worse than falling short. This can be explained for example by budget overruns often being criticized in public, e.g.

The basic income in Finland led only to a small increase in employment. Finland is the only country that carried out a complete nationwide randomized control trial of a basic-income program. „It has been widely hypothesized that universal basic income might alleviate many problems in contemporary labor markets, like job polarization and inequality. However, in our research we could not find a major impact on the Finnish labor market“, says Jouko Verho one of the authors.

A new policy brief from EconPol Europe analyses current vaccine production contracts and recommends an optimal contract design to boost availability. The policy implications, say authors, are very clear: contracts should contain incentives for accelerated production, with vaccines delivered early commanding a higher price.

Robotization has significantly lower productivity effects than previously assumed and may cause falling wages, according to a new study from EconPol Europe. The study also rejects previous research findings that the technology causes skill-biased technological change and instead finds the opposite to be true.