Dr. Mathias Dolls

Most German companies expect productivity to remain the same should their employees return from hybrid working to working solely in the office: 60.1% believe that employee productivity will remain the same in this case; 31.6% think it will increase with full office use; only 8.3% predict that employees would then work less productively. “The majority’s positive experience with productivity is an important reason why working from home has become established in many German companies”, says ifo researcher Mathias Dolls.

In the United States, the average time spent working from home is 1.4 days per week. In the United Kingdom, employees work from home for 1.5 days per week on average. In Australia, the average is 1.3 days. The leader among the English-speaking countries is Canada, at 1.7 days per week. In other Western countries, people spend much less time working from home. The average in Germany is 1.0 days, while in France and Italy, it is just 0.6 and 0.7 days per week. This is the finding of a survey of full-time employees conducted by the ifo Institute in a total of 34 countries.

When people know about the economic costs of discrimination based on sexual orientation, they are more likely to accept measures that safeguard equal employment opportunities for sexual minorities. This is according to an ifo survey conducted with EconPol Europe in Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine regarding lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals. “Denying LGB individuals access to their desired profession results in an overall economic cost. Information campaigns that reveal these macroeconomic costs can contribute to higher approval of antidiscrimination measures in countries with low acceptance of sexual minorities,” says ifo expert Mathias Dolls.

Working from home has motivated many people to relocate, especially former city dwellers. This is the result of a survey of 12,000 people in Germany conducted by the ifo Institute and the real-estate portal immowelt. “Among those who left the big city behind, 38 percent moved to the suburbs, while 30 percent moved to smaller cities with between 100,000 and 500,000 residents. Only 9 percent of former big-city residents moved to a small town, and 5 percent to rural areas,” says Mathias Dolls, Deputy Director of the ifo Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys.

The amount of time full-time employees work from home in Germany has lev-eled off at an average of 1.4 days per week since the pandemic – compared to 1.3 days in neighboring France, 1.6 days in the US, and 1.1 days in Japan. This means that Covid-19 has had a severe and lasting effect on working conditions.

The supply of rental properties in the Berlin has shrunk by up to 60 percent due to the city’s rent cap and has been holding at that level since the cap was lifted, finds a new ifo Institute study. “As soon as the rent cap was announced, the supply of rental apartments in Berlin plummeted. In areas outside the scope of the rent cap, there was an above-average increase in supply, but the lifting of the cap has reversed this trend,” says Mathias Dolls, Deputy Director of the ifo Center for Macroeconomics and Surveys.

The coronavirus pandemic could give a strong boost to the existing trend of migration from city centers to suburbia. This is a finding from a survey of over 18,000 people in Germany conducted by the ifo Institute and real-estate portal immowelt. According to the survey, 13 percent of respondents from large cities with more than 500,000 residents plan to leave in the next 12 months. Nearly half (46 percent) of all respondents with short-term plans to move said that the coronavirus pandemic had influenced their decision.

The allocation of EU funding is accompanied by an increase in nighttime lights in the communities that receive it. “This could be an indication of higher economic performance in these areas and thus of the effectiveness of EU funding,” says ifo researcher Mathias Dolls. However, so far this research does not prove a causal relationship between funding and economic growth, but only a certain correlation. These findings are from an article for ifo Schnelldienst.

In Berlin, rents and purchase prices for properties affected by the city’s rent cap have developed more weakly than in other major German cities. Berlin introduced its cap exactly one year ago. At the same time, the supply of rental properties in the regulated segment declined. This is the finding of a new ifo Institute study comparing Berlin with other major cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants. “Purchase price growth rates in Berlin have been 5 to 9 percentage points below the control group since the third quarter of 2020,” says ifo President Clemens Fuest, one of the coauthors. By contrast, rents and purchase prices for uncapped properties in Berlin have recently been rising faster than in the control group.

In Berlin, the rent for almost all apartments advertised on real estate portal immowelt.de (96.7 percent) is above the rent cap. In 83.5 percent of cases, the rent exceeds the cap by over 20 percent. This is the result of an analysis conducted by the ifo Institute and Immowelt. When the law comes into force, rents 20 percent above or higher must be reduced – even if the rental agreement was signed before the cut-off date in June 2019.

The ‘retirement at 63’ scheme in Germany leads to higher costs than originally thought. According to calculations by the ifo Institute in Munich the scheme has resulted in direct additional pension insurance expenditures of 6.5 billion euros between 2014 to 2016, while the German government had estimated the costs at 5 billion. “If foregone taxes and social contributions are added, the total costs in this period even amount to 12.5 billion euros. Costs are expected to rise even more in the coming years when bigger birth cohorts are able to take advantage of the deduction-free early pension”, say ifo researchers Carla Krolage and Mathias Dolls.

La retraite à 63 ans en Allemagne a entraîne des coûts plus élevés que prévu. D’après les calculations de l‘Institut ifo de Munich, elle a entraîné de 2014 à 2016 des dépenses supplémentaires directes de 6,5 milliards d'euros pour l'assurance retraite alors le le gouvernement avait tablé sur seulement 5 milliards d’euros. „Si l'on ajoute les pertes fiscales et sociales, le coût total pour cette période s'élève même à 12,5 milliards d'euros. Les coûts devraient encore augmenter au cours des prochaines années si les plus grandes cohortes de naissance sont en mesure de profiter de la pension anticipée sans escompte“, disent les chercheurs de l’Institut ifo, Carla Krolage et Mathias Dolls.

Un système européen de réassurance-chômage pourrait absorber en moyenne 15 à 25 pour cent des pertes de salaires causées par l'augmentation du chômage dans les récessions profondes, mais divers arrangements devraient être pris afin d'éviter des effets incitatifs négatifs, selon une nouvelle étude d'EconPol Europe, écrit par Mathias Dolls, chercheur à l'Institut ifo.

A European unemployment re-insurance system could absorb an average of 15-25 percent of income losses caused by rising unemployment in deep recessions, but various arrangements would need to be made in order to avoid negative incentive effects, according to new research from EconPol Europe.