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CESifo is the international platform of the University of Munich's Center for Economic Studies and Germany's Ifo Institute for Economic Research

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		Required reading: The blind alleys of green policies, by Hans-Werner Sinn. >> Read more

Newest at CESifo
November 5th, 2008

But it looks so sweet...

Job Killer
Minimum wages: Seldom has such a good-sounding measure been accompanied by so many potential ill effects. But, because it sounds so good, it has many vocal advocates. Still, if you want to avoid job losses, higher inequality, increased fiscal expenditures and lower aggregate income in the low-wage sector, the blanket introduction of minimum wages must be stopped. There are better policy measures than that, as a new study by Andreas Knabe and Ronnie Schöb shows.
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And I thought this pillar was solid

Put it to the Board
The only thing that rivals stock exchange listings in the intensity of perusal by economists are the listings that rank them in comparison to their peers. Much hangs from such listings: career prospects, tenured professorships, even an eventual Nobel prize. So, it comes as no surprise that such rankings are quite ubiquitous. But could they all be wrong, because they do not accurately rate the economists listed? Bruno Frey and Katja Rost think so, and have an idea how this can be corrected.
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Not exactly happiness, but a pretty similar sensation

What Makes You Happy
It sounds almost like a cliché: being richer does not make you happier. All those poor millionaires, the high rates of depression and suicide in rich countries and so on. This apparent lack of a link between a country's level of economic development and the overall happiness of its citizens has become known as the Easterlin Paradox. But now Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers have revisited this paradox and found that being richer does make you happier—and not just in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses fashion.
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New Book by Ifo President
Green is the colour of our times. The policies sporting its shade will save the polar ice caps from melting, deserts from spreading, islands from sinking and the weather from running amok. But will they really? A new book by Hans-Werner Sinn casts doubt on these rosy assumptions. In fact, he calls them illusions. One-sided policies leading to lower fossil fuel consumption in, say, Germany will do nothing to lower carbon dioxide emissions on a global scale: what the Germans won't consume will be happily gobbled up by other, less virtuous countries. In the end, what determines the amount of CO2 being released in the atmosphere is the amount of fossil fuels being brought to market.
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Other Papers of Interest
From pharmaceutical patents through gender wage gaps to 19th-century body height to bankers� turnover and financial contagion: the latest CESifo Working Papers contain research findings for nearly every field of interest, from the historical to the most current. As it is not possible to explore each paper in detail in this issue, we provide here a quick overview complete with download links.
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Looking for hard data to support your research?

Visit CESifo's DICE Database for free-of-charge data on country basics, education, labour markets, public finance, social policy, health, business and much more.

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