IZA - Electronic Archive

In order to meet the demand for both comprehensive information and easy navigation, we have relaunched our website with an improved structure and design. These are some of the most important changes:

• A horizontal navigation bar was added on the top of the page to separate our "service features" (such as search, sitemap, contact, or member login) from the information features accessible through the vertical menu bar.
• A new "Labor Policy" menu contains information on IZA activities that are targeted at policymakers and the general public. The page includes a collection of useful facts and figures, selected commentaries by IZA staff members, and information on books, reports, and policy-related events.
• The news menu contains our new "Black Board" and an archive including our email and print newsletters. "Top news" items are announced on the homepage to make them visible at first glance.
• Our clickable organization chart offers direct access to all personal profiles and research areas. To help you find the person you are looking for, the staff menu now contains separate pages with thumbnail pictures for researchers and support staff as well as a complete phone book.
• Our research menu now has separate pages for all IZA research program areas. Updated information will be added successively.

If you have any comments or suggestions, or if you cannot find a page that you used to visit previously, please contact webmaster@iza.org

Sher Verick

Sher Verick, former student at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics and IZA Resident Research Affiliate since October 2000, successfully passed his final examination to receive his Ph.D. in Economics for his doctoral thesis on "Micro-Level Investment and Labour Demand - An Econometric Analysis of German Firms". The dissertation committee included IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann as well as Research Director Armin Falk and former Research Director Gerard Pfann. In his new job as a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, Sher will conduct research on such topics as poverty, jobless households, and program evaluation. He will maintain close ties to IZA as a new member of the circle of IZA Alumni.

IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann has been elected to the Senate of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the largest organization for applied research in Europe.
The Senate is made up of about 30 eminent figures from the world of science, business, industry, politics, and public life. It appoints the Executive Board and is responsible for the basic science and research policy of the organization. It also formulates decisions concerning the establishment, the incorporation or devolution, the merger and dissolution of the currently 58 research entities in Germany and abroad belonging to the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Zumwinkel

Klaus Zumwinkel, President of IZA and CEO of Deutsche Post World Net, received this year's "John J. McCloy Award" on November 29, 2004. The American Council on Germany honored Zumwinkel's contributions to German-American business relations through the growing presence of the German postal service in the United States. In his almost 15 years as CEO, Zumwinkel managed to transform the former government agency into a highly profitable multinational corporation. As the President of IZA, he also heads an international research institute with close ties to American partners. The "John J. McCloy Award" was established as a tribute to the former High Commissioner in Germany (1949-1952) and initiator of U.S. President John F. Kennedy's famous Berlin visit (1963).

Despite some progress in recent years, the integration of immigrants from non-western countries in the EU labor markets still causes significant problems. This is one of the findings from a comparative research project on labor market integration of foreigners in Germany and Denmark. On the basis of representative surveys among migrants, researchers from the Danish Rockwool Foundation and IZA analyzed questions of education, training, employment and income prospects as well as the probability of self-employment among migrants. The economists also calculate the "socio-economic balance" of tax revenue generated by and transfer payments awarded to immigrants. The results have been published in two books. While the English version provides a complete account of the research findings, the German version offers a more policy-oriented perspective.

For more information: Press release (German) | Summary of the English book | Short summary of the German book

Klaus F. Zimmermann/Holger Hinte, Zuwanderung und Arbeitsmarkt. Deutschland und Dänemark im Vergleich, Berlin et al. 2004. [more info]
Torben Tranæs/Klaus F. Zimmermann (eds.), Migrants, Work, and the Welfare State, Odense 2004. [more info]

Zimmermann

IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann has been elected "Fellow of the European Economic Association" (EEA). At this year's EEA meeting in Madrid, the EEA Council decided to honor all economists who have made a significant contribution to the EEA and to economics research in Europe through the establishment of this Fellowship. It is to be bestowed on all those elected to Council, the Association's officers, the editors of its journal, the Program Chairs of its annual congresses, as well as the Marshall and Schumpeter Lecturers. It will be a lifetime fellowship aiming to foster a close relationship between the generations of economic researchers in Europe and to promote the development of European research.

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The IZA Prize in Labor Economics 2004, which carries a cash reward of 50,000 Euro, was awarded to the renowned U.S. economist Edward P. Lazear (Stanford University). Edward Lazear, 56, is the third American to receive the IZA Prize. His analytical and empirical research has contributed significantly to the understanding of the labor market. His pioneering work has helped establish personnel economics as an independent and well-respected field of research.

More information:
Download IZA press release (PDF) | Stanford University press statement | About the IZA Prize

Bargain

Olivier Bargain joined IZA as a Research Associate in September 2004. He was previously a Ph.D. student at DELTA, Paris. His main research interests are in applied public economics and family economics. Among other topics, he has studied the impact of tax policies on labor supply and welfare, optimal taxation, microeconometric methods and models of household behavior.

Sunde

The Annual Meeting of the European Economic Association (EEA) and the Econometric Society European Meeting (ESEM) were again held jointly at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain, from August 19-24, 2004 [see homepage].
As in the previous years, IZA research was exceptionally well represented in the contributed sessions of the meetings, with a total of 12 invited papers that were authored or co-authored by IZA staff members.
IZA Research Associate Uwe Sunde set the record among all conference participants, with a total of five accepted papers of which he presented two himself.

On June 25-26, 2004, IZA hosted its inaugural Annual Migration Meeting. This meeting brought together young researchers and renowned scientists in the field of migration from all over the world, who shared their knowledge and current research on migration. A perfect mix of economists and sociologists debated issues on earnings, wealth, education, return migration, smuggling of immigrants, locational choices, new immigrant surveys etc. The highlight of the meeting was the newly introduced Julian Simon lecture on "Immigration Policy: Methods of Economic Assessment", delivered by IZA Research Fellow Don DeVoretz in honor of the great American economist and migration expert Julian Simon who passed away in 1998.
The meeting was chaired by the AM²organizers IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann and IZA Deputy Program Director Amelie Constant, as well as by IZA Program Director Barry R. Chiswick.

Felix Büchel †

It is with deep regret that we announce that IZA Research Fellow Felix Büchel has passed away on July 12, 2004. Felix Büchel was a tenured Senior Research Scientist (C3 position) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung) in Berlin. He was affiliated as a Professor of Economics (Adjunct Professorship) at the Technical University Berlin, as a Professor of Sociology (Honorary Professorship) at the Free University of Berlin, and as a Research Professor with the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) at the DIW Berlin. As one of IZA's most active Research Fellows, he participated in several IZA workshops and published a total of 10 IZA Discussion Papers [view his personal profile].
IZA will cherish his great contributions in memory.

IZA continually expands its activities in supporting and promoting young labor economists. In addition to integrating junior researchers as IZA Research Associates and IZA Research Affiliates, IZA is also actively involved in the graduate studies program of the Bonn Graduate School of Economics. To complement these efforts, IZA has established its own Scholarship Program offering a number of doctoral scholarships in different fields of labor economics, preferably in one of IZA's research program areas on (1) Labor Market Policy (2) Migration and (3) Behavioral Economics [read more].

van den Berg

We are pleased to announce that Gerard J. van den Berg (Free University of Amsterdam) has accepted the offer to become IZA Program Director for "Evaluation of Labor Market Programs". Van den Berg is Full Professor in Labor Economics and has worked at Northwestern University, New York University, Stockholm School of Economics, Tilburg University, Groningen University, and INSEE-CREST before joining the faculty of the Free University of Amsterdam. Since January 1999, he has been an IZA Research Fellow. He is Joint Managing Editor of The Economic Journal and has published in Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, International Economic Review and other journals. He is also affiliated with IFAU (Uppsala), INSEE-CREST (Paris), and CEPR (London).

O. Bover         M. Arellano

During the Annual Conference of the European Society for Population Economics (ESPE) in Bergen, Norway, Klaus F. Zimmermann, IZA Director and Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Population Economics, announced the third Kuznets Prize Winner of the Journal. Olympia Bover (Bank of Spain) and Manuel Arellano (CEMFI) receive the Prize for their article "Learning about migration decisions from the migrants: Using complementary datasets to model intra-regional migrations in Spain", Journal of Population Economics (2002) 15:357-380. At a formal ceremony on June 10, Olympia Bover personally received the Prize, which is awarded for the best article published in the Journal during a three-year period [read more].

A. Falk

In May 2004, IZA Research Director Armin Falk, Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn and Director of the Bonn Laboratory for Experimental Economics, received the "CESifo Prize in Public Economics 2004 – Distinguished CESifo Affiliate". This prize is awarded annually by the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich, jointly with the ifo Institute, to honor academically outstanding and policy-relevant work by a CESifo affiliate in the field of Public Sector Economics. The award-winning paper entitled "Charitable Giving as a Gift Exchange: Evidence from a Field Experiment" was published as IZA Discussion Paper No. 1148.

A successful workshop on migration, organized by Amelie Constant (IZA) and Michael Fix (Urban Institute), was conducted on May 21 in Washington, D.C. Contributing researchers from IZA, DIW Berlin, and the Urban Institute covered hot topics on migration in Germany and the United States.
IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann and Program Director (Migration) Barry R. Chiswick also attended the workshop and were very pleased with the quality of work presented [see complete program].

Chr. Belzil

IZA Research Fellow and Associate Christian Belzil, who joined the IZA staff on a part-time basis since June 2003, has received funding under the Mercator Program of the DFG (German Science Foundation). He is teaching a doctoral course in applied microeconometrics at the Bonn Graduate School of Economics (download course description).

Prof. Belzil is one of only two economics professors currently supported by the Mercator Program. The program enables Germany's research universities to invite highly qualified scientists and academics working abroad to complete a DFG-funded stay at their institutes. The visit should focus on joint cooperative projects by the guest and host. By assuming teaching duties, visiting professors will contribute to providing a clear international dimension to the research-oriented training of young researchers in the host departments.

More and more IZA Fellows heading German economic research institutes

Snower

IZA Research Fellow Dennis Snower (Birkbeck College, London) will become President of the renowned Kiel Institute for World Economics (IfW Kiel). As IZA Program Director, Snower has played a key role in IZA research activities since 1998. He is widely regarded as one of the most eminent labor economists worldwide.

"IZA congratulates Dennis Snower on his challenging new task. Owing to his scientific excellence and expertise on questions of incentive-based welfare state reform, he will certainly stimulate the German modernization debate", said IZA Director and DIW President Klaus F. Zimmermann.

Schmidt , Straubhaar

Dennis Snower is the second IZA Program Director to head an influencial German think tank. In the fall of 2002, former IZA Program Director Christoph M. Schmidt (University of Bochum), who received his habilitation under the supervision of IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann, became President of the Rhine-Westphalian Institute for Economic Research (RWI Essen). Thomas Bauer (Ruhr University of Bochum), another former IZA Program Director and successful habilitation candidate under Zimmermann, was recently appointed to the RWI board as well. IZA Fellow Thomas Straubhaar (University of Hamburg) has managed the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA Hamburg) since 1999 while keeping close ties with IZA.

Raffelhüschen

In addition, IZA Research Fellow Bernd Raffelhüschen (University of Freiburg; University of Bergen), a renowned expert in the field of generational accounting and an influential political advisor on social security issues, has been offered the presidency of the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).

Klaus F. Zimmermann: "We are proud to have IZA Fellows and former Program Directors in these important positions. While this should not get in the way of a healthy competition among the institutes, it offers interesting opportunities for enhanced cooperation."

"Facts and Figures"

In response to the strong demand for up-to-date statistics, a special web category with "Facts and Figures" now provides information on relevant labor market questions in the form of commented figures. They include national and international economic indicators as well as a survey of forecasts by German economic research institutes. The content is constantly updated and expanded. IZA thus provides a single gateway for the informed public to access important data and statistics. The site is targeted not only at economists, but also at students, teachers, professors, and economic journalists, who are looking for information on specific topics to underscore their arguments. We welcome any comments or suggestions to expand our "Facts and Figures" section.

Merz

On March 16, 2004, the successful "IZA Tower Talk" event series featured Friedrich Merz, vice chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction in the German Bundestag. Merz. In his speech, which dealt with the economic and labor market crisis in Germany, he outlined key elements of his "Agenda 2004". Many Germans fail to realize how deeply Germany is mired in crisis, Merz contended. EU accession will cause more firms and jobs to move east. According to Merz, the "bubble" created by Germany’s "prosperity illusion" is bound to burst, which may even lead to political instability. He called for foresighted policymaking and more fundamental reforms. With respect to the labor market, the fallacy of working time reduction should be abandoned. At the same time, outdated collective bargaining regulations should be revised to leave more room for firm-specific agreements. The labor market and financial policy expert of the Christian Democratic Union also warned that the increasing tax rate competition within the EU will force Germany to implement further tax reforms. [download speech in German]

Merz, Schneider

During the subsequent discussion with Hilmar Schneider, IZA Director of Labor Policy, Merz harshly criticized the "organized irresponsibility" at the Federal Employment Services (Bundesagentur für Arbeit), which he called "hardly reformable" under its current structure. He agreed with Schneider that policymakers seem to fail at communicating the necessity and long-term purpose of the current reform efforts to the public, but he also called for more political involvement on the part of Germany’s citizens.

In the globalized economy, labor migration has become of central importance. A key issue in the analysis of immigration is how the migrants fare in the economy in which they migrate, and how they assimilate towards the behavior of the natives. A new IZA volume, edited by IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann and IZA Research Fellow and Associate Amelie Constant, collects fundamental papers of the Journal of Population Economics and provides answers to these questions.

Using data from the United States, Canada, and many European countries, Australia and New Zealand, the chapters study the development of earnings, employment and, unemployment, self-employment, occupational choices and educational attainment after migration. The book also investigates the role of language in labor market integration and examines the situation of illegal, legalized and unwilling migrants. Policy effects are also studied: Among those are the effects of selection criteria of labor market success and the effects immigrants have on the public sector budget of the receiving country. Hence, the book provides a broad picture of the performance of migrants on the labor market [more info].

K. F. Zimmermann

IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann has renewed his contract as President of DIW Berlin (German Institute for Economic Research) for another five years until 2009. Since 2000, Zimmermann has been head of Germany’s largest economics think tank in addition to his task as IZA Director. This dual job has provided a valuable stimulus for cooperative research and projects at IZA and DIW Berlin. "We are determined to further intensify our cooperation and to take advantage of our combined strengths in the competition among research institutes," said Zimmermann. "This will enable IZA to maintain and improve its top position in national and international labor market research."

Read the DIW Berlin press release and the “Handelsblatt” article (both in German only).

DP Coordinator Mark Fallak presenting DP No. 1000

In the sixth year of its existence, IZA has now published the 1,000th working paper in the IZA Discussion Paper Series. This means that one paper was produced almost every other day. During the last year, a new paper came out every single working day (see our submission statistics). But the IZA DPs are not just about quantity, they are also of high quality. This is reflected in our download statistics, our constantly growing subscriber base, and especially in the fact that many of our papers are likely to be accepted for publication in renowned journals.

(downloads 2003)

• IZA currently ranks third (!), just behind NBER and CEPR, in terms of abstract views at RePEc, the largest online database for working papers in economics.
  
• IZA DPs were downloaded more than 100,000 times from our own server in 2003, not including downloads via the SSRN network.
  
• More than 1,000 subscribers receive our regular DP email notification – thousands more are reached via the SSRN abstract mailings.
  
• More than 250 IZA papers have been accepted for publication in major journals or collective volumes (counting only publications that authors have reported to us).
  
• Most common topics (by JEL classification)
  
• Top 10 authors by number of DPs
  
• Top 10 downloaded papers in 2003
  

(annual stats)

Although the 1,000th paper was chosen randomly (by order of submission), we are pleased to mention that it was co-authored by one of our most active contributors, Jan van Ours (Tilburg University), who has now published a total of 18 IZA Discussion Papers. He presented the paper on "Experiments on Unemployment Benefit Sanctions and Job Search Behavior" at the weekly IZA Research Seminar on March 2, 2004.

The World Bank has supported the establishment of a Labor Market Working Group, under the auspices of the Bank's new European research network (Researchers Alliance for Development - RAD), that will be in dialogue with the Bank as it undergoes a revision of its labor market strategy. According to its mission statement, the RAD is an action oriented and multidisciplinary network of researchers from Europe and its bordering regions. Its objective is to contribute to innovative responses to poverty and development challenges by strengthening interaction between researchers, the World Bank and decision makers.

IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann has accepted the offer to join the Core Team of this Working Group that will consist of 15-20 key individuals from the broader research community, policy makers and civil society representatives from the EU and the OECD.

Bert Rürup, economics professor and head of the German government commission for "sustainability in financing the social security systems", spoke at the IZA Tower Talk on January 21, 2004, and engaged in a lively discussion with Hilmar Schneider, IZA Director of Labor Policy.

Bert Rürup

Rürup warned against misguided plans to reform the German social security system. Neither the recently proposed "citizen’s insurance", which would force public servants and the self-employed into the mandatory pension scheme, nor tax-financed base pensions are viable concepts to deal with the pension financing problems, said Rürup. Instead of radical changes in the system, he called for a sustainable reform of the current pay-as-you-go scheme to curb the contribution hike while gradually raising the retirement age to 67. Rürup criticized the lack of courage on the part of German policymakers, whose recently passed reform package left the retirement age unaffected, thus limiting the potential effects of the pension reform. "There is no such thing as a secure pension", said Rürup. People should be made aware that their public pensions will no longer allow them to maintain their standard of living, and that they will need a supplementary privately funded pension plan.

Bert Rürup, Hilmar Schneider

Rürup also criticized the recent efforts to reform the German health system. Although he found no empirical evidence of a "cost explosion" in the health sector, health costs should no longer be tied to labor costs as this would slow down growth. He therefore strongly favored the introduction of "health premiums" to be paid by each individual independent of income. Additional reforms, which according to Rürup will become inevitable in a few years, should allow the health sector to grow and thus to stimulate employment.

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The volume "Reformen - jetzt!" (Reforms - Now!), initiated and edited by IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann, is a forum for influential economists to present their views as pioneering intellectuals and lateral thinkers. Their contributions illustrate the key questions on the future of government, economy and society. They offer unvarnished diagnoses and propose therapies that are as inconvenient as they are honest. And most importantly of all, they help restore confidence that Germany can get back on track.

What the country needs is lasting remedies, not just quick-relief medications. This volume introduces central elements of a long-term reform agenda into the German debate. Furthermore the book documents the recent IZA Labor Market Policy Program as well as the IZA Appeal to German Policymakers ("Courage to Reform!"), which has by now been signed by more than 300 renowned economists.

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The book was presented to the public at the ARD-Hauptstadtstudio Berlin on January 29, 2004. Participants of the discussion were the authors Friedrich Schneider, Gert. G. Wagner, Hilmar Schneider and Klaus F. Zimmermann, joined by Christopher Plass (head of the HR studio in Berlin) and Thomas Fricke (chief economist at Financial Times Deutschland). Among the main topics of the debate were the shadow economy and educational policy. [more info on the book]

Dolado

Juan Dolado, co-organizer of the IZA/CEPR European Summer Symposium in Labour Economics (ESSLE) is stepping down from his post as Co-Director of CEPR's programme in Labour Economics. He has played a key role in bringing in many excellent young researchers who share his dedication to developing the highest quality empirical work in the field.

Pischke

Jörn-Steffen Pischke will become the new Co-Director to Gilles Saint-Paul, who succeeded IZA Director Klaus F. Zimmermann as Director of CEPR’s LE programme in 2001. Pischke has been an IZA Research Fellow since 1999. His move from MIT to the London School of Economics a few years ago is widely regarded as a big plus for labour economics in Europe.