THE BERLIN OFFICE OF RWI
About RWI Berlin Office
In 2007, RWI's Berlin Office was established to reinforce the Institute's economic policy advice and active participation in policy processes. The central goals and tasks of the RWI Berlin Office include the networking with scientific cooperation partners - especially local universities - and communicating the Institute's research findings to policymakers. The Berlin office serves as a permanent and direct point of contact in the German capital city for all actors - e.g. from the media and political process - seeking competent answers to economic questions. The RWI Berlin Office team includes researchers from the competence areas Labor Markets, Education, Population – Climate Change and Development – Macroeconomics and Public Finance – as well as the research group Sustainability and Governance.
Activities of the RWI Berlin Office
The RWI Office Berlin organizes the "RWI Berlin Network Seminar" since 2023, inviting researchers based in Berlin to the RWI Berlin Office for research talks. The seminar is open to RWI-externals with prior registration (please email Claudia.Schmiedchen@rwi-essen.de).
The Berlin office is actively involved - through co-organization - in research networks such as the "Berlin Network for Labor Market Research" (BeNA), the "Research Seminar on Environment, Resource and Climate Economics" (RSERC), the "Development Economics Network Berlin" (DENeB) and the "Berlin Interdisciplinary Education Research Network" (BIEN).
The Berlin office also organizes different conferences, workshops and policy dialogue formats.
Events 2023
14.12.2023: RWI Berlin Network Seminar
Speaker: Felix Kersting (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link
Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am
Title: Industrialization, returns, inequality (co-authored with Thilo Albers and Timo Stieglitz)
Abstract: How do technological revolutions impact wealth inequality? To answer this question, we turn to the industrial revolution and analyze its role for wealth concentration both empirically and theoretically. Based on a novel dataset on regional top wealth shares and industrialization in Prussia, we provide causal evidence that industrialization can explain the shift in the top 1 share observed over the 19th century and also led to a fattening of the wealth distribution's tail. We rationalize these effects by introducing a dynamic 2-sector structure featuring scale and dynastic type dependence into an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous returns to capital. The simulations suggest that the combination of these two features explains about half of the total increase of the top 1 share, while the other half resulted from the general increase in capital returns.
15.11.2023: RWI Berlin Network Seminar
Speaker: Charlotte Bartels (DIW Berlin)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link
Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am
Title: tba
19.10.2023: RWI Berlin Network Seminar
Speaker: Rajshri Jayaraman (ESTM)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link
Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am
Title: tba
13.06.2023: RWI Research Seminar
Speaker: Claus Michelsen (Leuphana University Lüneburg)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Event
Title: "An Estimation and Decomposition of the Government Investment Multiplier"
01.06.2023: RWI Berlin Network Seminar
Speaker: Alexandra Spitz-Oener (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin und ROOKWOOL Foundation Berlin)
Location: Hybrid – Berliner Büro und Teams-Veranstaltung
Time: 10:30 - 11:30 am
Title: Workplace Connections and Migration: Evidence from German Reunification
22.05.2023: RWI Research Seminar
Speaker: Trine Engh Vattø (Statistics Norway)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Event
13.04.2023: RWI Berlin Network Seminar
Speaker: Jan Marcus (FU Berlin)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link
Time: 10:00 - 11:00 am
Title: "What a difference a day makes: Mortality effects of the school starting age"
04.04.2023: RWI Research Seminar
Speaker: Boryana Madzharova(FAU Nürnberg)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Event
Title: "Poland's Special Economic Zones: Effects on Regional Economic Development"
27.03.2023: DENeB Seminar Series on Development Economics
Speaker: Sarah Deschênes (Northwestern University)
Location: Virtual with Zoom Link
Time: 12:00 - 13:00 pm
Link to event page
Title: Expanding Access to Schooling in Nigeria: Impact on Marital Outcomes
Abstract: The paper uses the Universal Primary Education Program (UPE) implemented in Nigeria in 1976 to investigate the effect of wife and husband’s education on women’s empowerment. We combine regional disparities in baseline levels of enrollment with the timing of the pro- gram and the traditionally high age difference between partners to disentangle the impact of wife’s education from husband’s education. We find that the UPE had heterogeneous effects in the South compared to the North of Nigeria. In the South, women achieve more gender-equal marriages by delaying marriage by 1.23 years, and by reducing the age gap with their husband by 2 years. These women also maintain a stable education gap with their husband. In the North, unions’ characteristics remain unchanged except for the probability to marry a polygamous partner that increases when husbands are treated. In both regions, women are better off as the UPE decreases women’s tolerance of domestic violence and increases their say in decision-making (in the South only) but the mechanics of the effects differ: Northern women are made better off by the education of their husband’s whereas Southern women are better off thanks to the combined effects of their own education and their husband’s.
07.02.2023: RWI Berlin Network Seminar
Speaker: Peter Haan (DIW Berlin & Freie Universität Berlin)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams Link
Time: 10:00 - 11:00 am
Title: "Is Migration Reducing Labor Scarcity? Evidence From Long-Term Care"
30.01.2023: DENeB Seminar Series on Development Economics
Speaker: Toman Barsbai (University of Bristol)
16.01.2023: DENeB Seminar Series on Development Economics
Speaker: Soumya Balasubramanya (World Bank)
Events 2022
17.10.2022: DENeB Seminar Series on Development Economics
Speaker: Alexandra Scacco (WZB)
Location: Hybrid in Berlin office or with Zoom Link
Time: 13:00 - 14:00 pm
Title:"Intergroup Avoidance: Observational and Experimental Evidence from Israel"
Link to event homepage
23.09.2022: RWI Research Seminar
Speaker: Julius Andersson (Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office andTeams-Event
Title: "Decarbonisation and the Role of Nuclear Energy: Evidence from France"
Time: 11:00 - 12:00 Uhr
Link to event homepage
23.06.2022: Research Seminar on Environmental, Resource and Climate Economics (RSERC)
Speaker: Marion Leroutier (Mistra Centre for Sustainable Markets & Stockholm School of Economics)
Location: Hybrid – Berlin Office and Teams-Event
Title: "The Cost of Air Pollution for Workers and Firms: Evidence from Sickness Leave Episodes"
Time: 10:15 - 11:45 Uhr
Link to event homepage
Events 2017
29.06.2017: RWI conference GIZ-Haus
Title: “What works? The effectiveness of youth employment programs”
Location: Berlin
Background
Young people out of work are a population at risk in developed and developing economies alike: first, the average share of jobless youths is typically twice as high as the corresponding share among adults. Second, youth unemployment shows excess cyclical volatility, i.e. youths’ probability of job loss during recessions exceeds that of adult workers. “Scarring effects” exacerbate the consequences of youth unemployment, as time out-of-work early in the lifecycle negatively impacts long-term labor market outcomes. Fourth, in low- and middle income countries, youths struggle to enter a quality job, due to lack of skills, lack of access to education, or lack of information. Finally, all these patterns may lead to discouraging youths entirely, leaving them outside of employment, education, and training.
The Conference
The conference brings together policy makers and government officials, practitioners from NGOs, experts from international organizations, and researchers working on aspects of helping disadvantaged youths find quality employment. The focus of the conference is to learn about effective youth policies. We expect and will encourage a lively and open discussion among all conference attendees.
