The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Institut für Weltwirtschaft, or IfW) is an independent, non-profit economic research institute and think tank based in Kiel, Germany. In 2017, it was ranked as one of the top 50 most influential think tanks in the world and was also ranked in the top 15 in the world for economic policy specifically. German business newspaper, Handelsblatt, referred to the Institute as "Germany's most influential economic think tank", while Die Welt, stated that "The best economists in the world are in Kiel" ("Die besten Volkswirte der Welt sitzen in Kiel").Founded in 1914, the Institute is the oldest economic research institute in Germany. Its main areas of specialities include global economic research, economic policy, and economic education. The Institute is home to the world's largest specialist library of economics and the social sciences, the German National Library of Economics, which has access to more than four million publications in printed or electronic format and subscriptions to over 30,000 periodicals and journals. It is also a member of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community, or Leibniz Association, an association of research institutions, museums, and centers that includes Germany's six leading economic research institutes. The Institute employs approximately 160 people, of whom more than 80 are economists. The current president of the Institute is Gabriel Felbermayr, an Austrian-born economist who specializes in international economics, international trade agreements, and environmental economics.
Generative AI is changing how software is produced and used. In vibe coding, an AI agent builds software by selecting and assembling open-source software (OSS), often without users directly reading documentation, reporting bugs, or otherwise engaging with maintainers. We study the equilibrium effects of vibe coding on the OSS ecosystem. We develop a model with endogenous entry and heterogeneous project quality in which OSS is a scalable input into producing more software. Users choose whether to use OSS directly or through vibe coding. Vibe coding raises productivity by lowering the cost of using and building on existing code, but it also weakens the user engagement through which many maintainers earn returns. When OSS is monetized only through direct user engagement, greater adoption of vibe coding lowers entry and sharing, reduces the availability and quality of OSS, and reduces welfare despite higher productivity. Sustaining OSS at its current scale under widespread vibe coding requires major changes in how maintainers are paid.
To accelerate the pace of green transformation, a country relies heavily on the environmental performance of its firms. In this paper, we investigate whether firms with foreign ownership are more likely to adopt green management practices that help these firms to monitor and reduce their environmental impacts. Using firm-level data for 31 countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and North Africa, we show that foreign ownership increases the likelihood of adopting green management practices. In addition, we reveal that the magnitude of the relationship depends on host and home country characteristics—holding only for firms (1) in high- and upper-middle-income countries and (2) in countries that receive the bulk of their foreign direct investment from countries with relatively good environmental performance.
This article analyses public support for stronger migrant rights protections in migration policy cooperation agreements between European and African countries. We theorise and explore how individuals' preferences for stronger migrant rights protections in migration policy cooperation agreements vary with their perceived interests and broader normative commitments. Our empirical analysis draws on data collected from novel conjoint survey experiments that we conducted with quota-representative samples of the adult population in six European countries (the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden) and four African countries (Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia). We find a significant public preference across European and African countries for enhanced migrant rights protections, suggesting a strong and widespread norm in favour of migrant rights that holds across all the subgroups that we analyze. Our results also suggest that individuals' perceived interests and broader normative commitments matter for the strength of their support for migrant rights, and they also influence their preferences for who, i.e., the respondent's own country or the 'other' cooperation country, should provide the protection. We find only limited and partial evidence that including migrant rights protections increases individuals' support for more restrictive elements of migration policy cooperation.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in climate scenarios, and multiple CDR research and development efforts are ongoing. For instrumental, substantive and normative reasons, the public should be involved in decision-making related to CDR. We simulate a consultation process using online deliberation groups based on random draws from the Norwegian population, bookended by surveys. Using a multi-mode approach, we find that deliberation enhances participants' assessment of land-based bioenergy carbon capture and storage by.29 steps on a 1-4 scale, compared to a control group, while causing no significant changes in the assessments of four other CDR options presented. At the same time, the deliberation treatment reduces the incidence of 'do not know' and 'no opinion' responses by 71% for the main questions about the five technologies. Analysis of deliberation transcripts shows that participants emphasize the effectiveness, feasibility, and potential for unintended consequences of CDR, whereas questions of scale and relations with climate targets receive little attention. We conclude with observations on how deliberative formats may be used and enhanced as a research approach and procedure for involving the public in formulation of net-zero policy.
Pathogen-stress and terror-management theories predict that lethal epidemics heighten parochial cooperation. We test this prediction experimentally in two nationally representative US samples surveyed before and at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We compare trust and expected trustworthiness across the two waves in monetarily incentivized trust games involving non-Hispanic Whites, African Americans and Hispanics. We find significant ingroup favouritism in both waves. However, the aggregate ingroup premium fell by about one-half between waves. This decline was concentrated among left-leaning and moderate respondents. While non-Hispanic Whites tended to reduce their ingroup bias in expected trustworthiness, the opposite was found for African Americans. Respondents more exposed to COVID-19 displayed higher intergroup trust, altruism and expected trustworthiness than others. These results contradict the hypothesis that lethal epidemics intensify parochialism, also suggesting that the response may be diversified across groups.
