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  Newsletter January 2015
Featured Paper From the Editor Economic Indicators
The Original 
Publications of Interest
The Chart Forthcoming Event People Ifo News Bulletin Board
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  Featured Paper

I like that tune

 Follow the Music

Music enriches the spirit. That much is known. That it also enriches your wallet is a bit less obvious. The idiosyncratic musical decisions of some rulers after the Thirty-Year War laid the foundations for a quasi-natural experiment that, as a new CESifo working paper explains, is bearing economic fruit even today.

Other CESifo Working Papers
Working Paper Submission Form

  The Original Sinn

Just add water

 Europe's Shadow Budget

Magic tricks are the thing with the ongoing War on the Euro Crisis: the whatever-it-takes incantation for instance, which by mere virtue of its utterance calmed the beast, and now the conjuring up of a 325-billion-euro pot out of a 6-billion acorn to finance infrastructure spending. If it works, great. But don't overlook its shadow side, warns Hans-Werner Sinn.

More from and about Hans-Werner Sinn:
Sinn, Greece and the "valley of tears"
Video presentation on the euro crisis, including the Greek conundrum
Ifo President Sinn Calls For International Debt Conference on Greece

   Economic Indicators

Happy high year

 Ifo Business Climate Index Continues to Rise

It has been a tumultuous month: the announcement of the ECB's bond-buying programme, the Syriza earthquake, the Swiss franc shock, a flare up in the Ukrainian conflict, the death of the Saudi king. And through all this, German business appears unfazed. The Ifo Business Climate Index rose for the third month in a row, on the back of rosier expectations for the coming six months and a more positive assessment of the current situation.

Other Economic Indicators:
Germany's Capital Exports Hit New High
Credit Constraints Fall to Historic Low
German Firms Step Up Search for Extra Staff
Export Outlook for German Manufacturing Continues to Brighten
German Service Sector: Ifo Business Climate Indicator for the Service Sector Edges Downwards
Trade and Prosperity Gains via TTIP: Model Calculations
Euro Area Economy Expanding at a Slow Pace

   From the Editor

Without me you're not the same

 Come Fly With Me, Come What May

When ticking the boxes of what is indispensable to feel like a country worth its salt, many EU states have already come to terms with giving up fiscal sovereignty, ditching their national currency and unmanning their borders. Not even a national army is sine qua non anymore. So what remains? A national anthem? Yes, tick that. And a flag carrier airline! You can dump everything else, but we set a red line at touching our (not even much-loved) airline. Tick that right away.

  The Chart

 

 Feeling Unwell

Germans, for all their vaunted work ethic and high productivity, are a sickly lot: their rate of absenteeism due to illness is humongous. But that is nothing compared to Slovaks: they have been topping the charts for ages, as this DICE Visual Story shows. (Tip: the data for 2013 is incomplete, so check any other year.)

   Publications of Interest

The world is my oyster

 Have Skill, Will Travel

Students in developed countries have become far more footloose over the past fifty years: they might be born in one country, attend university in a second, and find employment in a third. A group of top-notch contributors analyse the consequences this has for fiscal policies, the financing of higher education, and economic growth in a CESifo MIT book edited by Marcel Gérard and Silke Uebelmesser.

Other Publications of Interest:
Latest issue of "Economic Policy"
CESifo Forum
CESifo Economic Studies
CESifo DICE Report
CESifo World Economic Survey
CESifo Working Papers
  Forthcoming Events

Brendan Simms

 The German Problem and the European Question

Brendan Simms, a Professor in the History of International Relations at the University of Cambridge, will tell us what lessons history holds for us regarding the so-called German question in a forthcoming Munich Seminar in February. The question, he argues, has always been of central importance to European politics, but German politics itself is shaped by pressure from Europe.

Check out also:
Forthcoming Academic Conferences

   People

Faces of the Month

 Guests and Locals

The CESifo Group is hosting a number of scholars during January. See what they are working on and get to know their research focus and other aspects of interest.


   Ifo News

Fair trade nonetheless

 TTIP's Potential Impact on Third Countries

TTIP will not only affect its negotiation partners; it will potentially also impact developing and emerging economies. On the one hand, higher income in the EU and the USA will increase demand for goods and services from third countries, a good thing. On the other, the agreement can be expected to divert trade flows from TTIP partners away from third countries, a bad thing. A new study by the Ifo Institute and the IAW Tübingen explores how threats to emerging countries can be minimised and opportunities maximised.

Other Ifo News:
Resources Database: Oil Reserves in Pictures
Exports and the Impact of State Credit Guarantees
Conversion of Seasonal Adjustment in the Ifo Business Survey
New in the Ifo Resources Database

  Bulletin Board

 

 News and things of interest to CESifo Network members

Don't miss out on the call for papers for the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics conference, or on snatching one of the fully funded doctoral positions in Munich, among other things. Just check this month's Bulletin Board. For new postings, please contact Ines Gross.

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All texts are the responsibility of the editor and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Ifo, CES or CESifo, or of the researchers mentioned
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Editor: Julio C. Saavedra
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