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N26, Celonis and Biontech are the most recent success stories of the German start-up scene. All three enterprises have collected higher sums of venture capital in the past year. As good as this news may be, however, the overall picture of the German venture capital scene is rather problematic. Young German enterprises receive comparatively little risk capital.

In the past month, two new large liquidity injections have been announced. Firstly, a euros 750 billion Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) was launched to “expand the range of eligible assets under the corporate sector purchase programme (CSPP) and to ease the collateral standards.” And secondly, on 9 April the euros 530 billion SURE funding package (Supporting Unemployment Risks in Emergency) was agreed.

WP 2020-03.

In a new IREF Working Paper, David Stadelmann (Bayreuth University and IREF) and his co-authors discuss how the corona epidemic can be made less burdensome. They focus on the role of those who are immune after recovering from the illness and do not pose any health risks to others. The authors point to corona immunity as a resource that should be searched, found, produced, certified, and finally employed to ease the way out of the lockdown.

The literature has put forward two main arguments to explain the recent rise of populist parties and their electoral success. On the one hand, commentators have highlighted the rising level of uncertainty about the economy and grievances among the losers in global markets. Resentment, it is argued, has been susceptible to the anti-establishment message of populist movements and parties that blames ‘Them’ for taking away from “Us” prosperity, job opportunities, and public services from ‘Us’. On the other hand, authors have emphasised the role of culture and the backlash against long-term shifts in progressive and liberal social values. Such cultural backlash is especially strong among the older generation and less educated people, who suffer the displacement of familiar traditional norms and the rapid cultural changes that seem to be eroding the basic values and customs of Western societies. Other external shocks – such as the massive recent increase in immigration – are related to both explanations. Immigrants ‘compete’ against native low-wage, unskilled workers, and at the same time bring with them new values and behaviours that may be source of tensions with the residents in the destination countries.

Online shopping is increasingly popular. According to a survey from 2019, almost 90 percent of 25- to 44-year-olds had ordered something online during the previous three months. Even half of those aged 65 or more confessed they shopped online. However, online shopping is also criticised for damaging the climate. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, for instance, demands higher postage to protect the climate from the increasing number of parcels that need shipping due to online shopping. Die Welt also considers the possibility of raising postage charges to fight climate change. The article claims that online returns in Germany cause as many daily CO2 emissions as 2,200 cars driving from Hamburg to Moscow. So, do we have to feel bad whenever we order shoes, smartphones or diapers online? Studies have assessed the effects of online trading. They conclude that online orders do usually not cause more greenhouse gas emissions than bricks-and-mortar trade. Yet, there is potential for improvement.

WP 2020-02.

A pandemic is not only a biological event and a public health disaster, but it also generates impacts that are worth understanding from a societal, historical, and cultural perspective. In this contribution, we argue that as the disease spreads, we are able to harness a valuable key resource, namely people who have immunity to Corona. This vital resource must be employed effectively, it must be certified, it must be searched for, it must be found, and it may even be actively produced. We discuss why this needs to be done and how this can be achieved. Our arguments not only apply to the current pandemic, but also to any future rapidly spreading, infectious disease epidemics. In addition, we argue for awareness of a secondary non-biological crisis arising from the side effects of pandemic reactions. There is a risk that the impacts of the secondary crisis could outweigh that of the biological event from a health and societal perspective.

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When they introduced the euro, European governments were expecting that the new currency would rival the dollar on international markets. Twenty years later, the euro is still far behind on that account. A recent paper by Ethan Ilzetzki, Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff (Why is the Euro punching below its weight?, NBER Working Paper No. 26760, February 2020) investigates this issue, and shows that the advent of the European currency did little more than consolidating the pre-existing franc and deutsche mark zones.

A substantial and growing amount of press attention has been devoted to the subject of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) since last year’s announcement of Libra which spooked regulators at central banks who are petrified of losing control of the mint. Central banks have a mixed track record in understanding and predicting trends in alternative payment technologies, and prior to Libra were relaxed that bitcoin was unlikely to attain mass adoption. Jerome Powell, head of the Federal Reserve gave congressional testimony shortly after the Libra announcement denigrating it on several counts. Nonetheless, Libra doubtless turbocharged central banks’ research.

The recent decision of the German Bundestag against the introduction of an opt out solution for organ donation has surprised many people. After all, the two leading health politicians of the coalition, CDU Health Minister Jens Spahn and SPD Health politician Karl Lauterbach, had publicly supported the opt out solution. In the vote on organ donation, however, the usual party discipline did not apply.

According to Article 38 of the German Constitution, the members of parliament “… are not bound to orders and instructions and are only subject to their conscience.” In practice, however, before a decision is made in the Bundestag, votes are taken in the respective parliamentary groups, and MPs usually follow this result. Parliamentary group discipline is also laid down in coalition agreements.

What influences the voting behaviour of members of parliament? Do they follow their own preferences, the party’s line, the whispers of interest groups or do they listen to their voters? In the latest IREF Working Paper, David Stadelmann of the University of Bayreuth and Gustavo Torrens of Indiana University examine the question of how strong the influence of different groups on political decisions is, exploiting unique data from Switzerland