The Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Essen (RWI Essen) is an independent economic research institute and think tank in Essen, Germany. Founded in 1926, the RWI maintains a non-profit status, mainly funded through public means while also receiving third-party-fundings. It conducts research on economic development, assists policy-making, and fosters economic literacy for the public. The RWI currently employs 80 people and is part of the Leibniz Association, a group of non-university research institutes in Germany.The current head of the RWI is Christoph M. Schmidt, a German economist and chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts. He received his Diplom in Economics from the University of Mannheim (1987) and a M.A./Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University (1989, 1991).
We study the effect of education on vaccination against COVID in Germany in a sample of individuals above the age of 60. In ordinary least squares regressions, we find that, in this age group, one more year of education goes along with a 0.7 percentage point increase in the likelihood to get a COVID vaccination. In two stage least squares regressions where changes in compulsory schooling laws are used as exogenous variation for education, the effect of an additional year of education is estimated to be zero. The results hold for the compliers to the policy change which are older individuals at the lowest margin of education.
Gute empirische Forschung benötigt vielfältige qualitativ hochwertige Daten. Hierunter fallen insbesondere – sensible Daten z.B. Abrechnungsdaten der Krankenkassen oder Befragungsdaten vulnerabler Gruppen aus dem Bildungsbereich. Die Verarbeitung dieser sensiblen Daten muss konform der Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (DSGVO) erfolgen. Zur Gewährleistung einer datenschutzkonformen Verarbeitung kann eine Vertrauensstelle als Intermediär zwischen datengebender und datennehmender Einrichtung eingebunden werden. Eine solche Vertrauensstelle fungiert folglich als Datentreuhänder. Am RWI – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung e.V. (RWI) übernimmt das Forschungsdatenzentrum Ruhr (FDZ Ruhr) die Funktion der Vertrauensstelle. Dieser Beitrag erläutert die Umsetzung und institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen der Vertrauensstelle am RWI. Hierzu werden im Folgenden das RWI und das FDZ Ruhr kurz charakterisiert. Anschließend wird auf die rechtlichen Grundlagen und die operative Umsetzung unter Bezugnahme zweier Praxisbeispiele eingegangen und abschließend als Fazit ein Best-Practice-Verfahren vorgestellt.
Despite massive digitization efforts, the German economy has experienced a marked slowdown in its productivity growth. This paper empirically analyzes three prominent explanations for this development. First, using a novel quarterly utilization-adjusted total factor productivity measure for the German economy, we find that the slowdown in U.S. productivity growth since the mid-2000s had only a negligible impact on the German productivity trend. Second, the structural shift towards services in the German economy explains a sizeable share of the weaker aggregate productivity gains. This transformation process is associated with a strong labor market performance. And third, employing a novel identification procedure, we show that technological progress in the German information and communication technology (ICT) producing sector stimulates both, aggregate output and employment growth. Its effect on aggregate productivity is, however, small.
No-claim refunds are cost-control instruments which stipulate a payback agreement contingent on one or more claim-free years. We study how such no-claim refunds affect claiming behavior using claims data from a large German health insurer and a policy that increased the refund size for certain plans. We propose a method to decompose the effect on claims into behavioral and non-behavioral components, and show that individuals responded to the refund policy by reducing claims by eight percent on average. The effect persisted for several years; behavioral responses were stronger for clients with more to gain from the policy; and reductions in claims were not restricted to treatments of questionable medical value.
