Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine, renewed curfews in China, and the consequences of these events on global supply chains, the inflation rate has reached historic levels in reunified Germany since the beginning of the year. The German government has already adopted two comprehensive measures to cushion the impact of rising prices for energy, food and mobility. However, given the increasing uncertainty in the energy supply and continuing high inflation rates, these do not seem to be enough.
Social welfare associations, in particular, have criticized that the relief measures have so far not considered lower income groups and pensioners sufficiently. At the same time, climate experts fear that individual interventions such as the fuel rebate will create false incentives in the fight against climate change.
Against this background, DIW Econ, together with Prof. Dr Claudia Kemfert, on behalf of the Climate Alliance Germany, has evaluated the existing relief measures and provides an outlook on how ecological and distributional effects can be considered together in a new relief package. This is done based on an analysis of five measures in the areas of energy & heat, transport & mobility and food, which are currently being discussed politically and in the media in anticipation of a further relief package.
During the Winter 2021 semi-annual Energy Systems Analysis Program (ETSAP) Meeting on 29th – 30th November 2021, DIW Econ presented a novel approach to integrate three different models – energy system TIMES model, macroeconomic CGE model and sectoral system dynamics (SD) model –into a hybrid integrated assessment model to support the elaboration of a long-term low-emission development strategy (LEDS) for Kazakhstan.
The Annual Report on European SMEs 2020/2021, commissioned by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) of the European Commission, reviews the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic on EU SMEs in 2020 as well as their expected performance in 2021, after providing a brief overview of their pre-pandemic performance. The report focuses particularly on the digitalisation of European SMEs, as the use of various digital tools in 2020 helped to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.
The annual report shows the size, structure and importance of SMEs for the European economy and provides an overview of the past and projected development of SMEs since 2008. This year’s edition focuses on the performance of SMEs in the fields of research, development and innovation (R&I).SMEs are the backbone of the EU-28 economy. In 2018 there were just over 25 million SMEs, representing 99.8 % of all enterprises in the EU-28 non-financial business sector. The value-added of these enterprises was 56.4 %, and the employment share 66.6 %.
Huawei commissioned DIW Econ to determine the economic significance of the company for Germany. This study aimed to describe the economic footprint of Huawei for Germany as a business location in qualitative and quantitative terms.
Huawei Technologies is a global leader in the digital economy with headquarters in Shenzhen (China) and is active in over 170 countries. The largest locations in Germany are the Western European headquarters in Düsseldorf and the site in Munich, where the company operates a major research centre.