Season's Greetings
The CESifo Team wishes you a peaceful and prosperous 2020. We would like to thank you for your interest in our newsletter.
Take note of these upcoming highlights for 2020:
March 2
EEAG Report Launch in Brussels
March 19
Richard Musgrave Lecture
June 8–13
Venice Summer Institute
June 18
ifo Annual Meeting
July
Munich Economic Summit
November 10–12
CES Munich Lectures in Economics
November 25–26
EconPol Europe Annual Conference
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Partisan Bias in Inflation Expectations
Is there a connection between inflation expectations and majorities for different parties? Yes! The authors find that inflation expectations in Republican-dominated US states were higher than in Democrat-dominated US states when Barack Obama was US president. Republican voters may well have expected government spending to increase, which is likely to give rise to higher inflation. Political parties should consider voters’ misperceptions about economic conditions.
Read a detailed summary of this CESifo Working Paper here.
Full paper
Other CESifo Working Papers
Working Paper Submission Form
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Transaction Tax Is a Step in the Wrong Direction
ifo President Clemens Fuest has criticized the planned financial transaction tax. “This tax is a perfect example of a policy that claims to solve problems, but actually exacerbates them,” he said in Munich. “Many people believe that it enables the state to fight harmful speculation, penalizing those who lined their pockets before the financial crisis at the expense of the general public. In fact, these goals call for other instruments.”
You can find an overview of the ifo Viewpoints from 2019 here.
More about Clemens Fuest on the ifo Institute’s website
Clemens Fuest’s LinkedIn profile
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 Assessing the Cost of Uncertainty Created by Brexit
The uncertainty surrounding Brexit is costing the UK economy GBP 16 billion per year, according to calculations by EconPol researchers. The cost is based on the level of political uncertainty, the effect of that uncertainty on the economy, and the comparative trajectory in the absence of uncertainty.
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Euro Area Reform Preferences of Central and Eastern European Economic Experts
A new survey reveals that the current debate over the future of the euro area is being heavily influenced by the major countries of Western Europe. The survey compares the statements of economic experts from Central and Eastern EU member states with those made by economists from France, Germany, and Italy.
More information about EconPol Europe
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ifo Economic Forecast Winter 2019: German Economy Stabilizes
The German economy stabilized in the third quarter of 2019. Overall, the average economic output for 2019 will expand by 0.5%; when adjusted for calendar effects, the growth is 0.6%. In the next year, gross domestic product is expected to increase more strongly by 1.1%, although the calendar effect of 0.4 percentage points exaggerates the quite modest underlying business cycle dynamic.
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ifo Researchers Support the Sale of Work Visas
How can Europe fight the causes of migration in countries of origin? The sale of temporary work visas could provide low-skilled economic migrants with a legal and secure route to Europe without undermining the welfare system. Panu Poutvaara, Director of the ifo Center for International Institutional Comparisons and Migration Research, has worked up this proposal.
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Improved PISA Performance Could Give Economic Strength a Major Boost
There is a link between economic strength and performance of the education system. “If performance in German schools climbed by 25 PISA points, the country’s economic strength would rise 7.3%. That’s about EUR 14 trillion for the rest of the century,” says Ludger Woessmann, Director of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education.
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ifo Business Climate Index Rises at Year-End (December 2019)
In the run-up to Christmas, sentiment among German executives has improved noticeably. The ifo Business Climate Index rose from 95.1 points (seasonally adjusted) in November to 96.3 points in December. The indicator of the current situation rose. Expectations also improved. The German economy is heading into the New Year with more confidence.
Other Economic Indicators:
ifo Employment Barometer
ifo Export Expectations
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Price Trends over the Product Life Cycle and the Optimal Inflation Target
What is the best way to determine the optimal inflation rate that a welfare‑maximizing central bank should target? The authors document a new stylized fact that the price decline of products after their market launch has accelerated in the last decade. They show that this has far-reaching consequences for the optimal inflation target of the Bank of England.
Other Publications of Interest:
CESifo Forum
CESifo Economic Studies
ifo DICE Report
 EconPol Publications
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Guests
Every month, CESifo and CES welcome guest researchers from different parts of the world. Learn more about who they are and what they are working on:
Anthony Strittmatter, University of St. Gallen, will be visiting CES 07.01.2020 – 14.02.2020
Axel Gautier, Université de Liège, will be visiting CESifo 27.01.2020 – 07.02.2020
Ning Meng, Business School, Nanjing University, will be visiting CES 28.01.2020 – 25.02.2020
Pietro Biroli, University of Zurich, will be visiting CESifo 29.01.2020 – 05.02.2020
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The Bulletin Board is a place where members of the CESifo network can post news and messages that are of interest to the research community and to all CESifo Newsletter readers. If you have anything you’d like to share, please feel free to contact us at services@cesifo.de.
Call for Papers: 76th Annual Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance
The International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF) will hold its 76th Annual Congress in Reykjavík, Iceland, on August 19–21, 2020. The theme of the keynote speeches and panels will be “Public Finance, Natural Resources and Climate Change”. Papers contributed on any topic within the field of public economics are welcomed. Both practitioners and academics are invited to participate. Please click here to read the call for Papers and visit the congress website for further information.
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Call for Papers: International Symposium on the Real Property Tax and Its Administration
The Center for Policy Research, part of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, is hosting a one-and-a-half-day symposium on November 16–17, 2020.
The symposium will focus on the real property tax (RPT) and its administration broadly defined. It welcomes paper topics that include, but are not limited to: (1) RPT design and its optimality; (2) RPT incidence, efficiency, adequacy, enforcement, and compliance; (3) size of taxing jurisdictions and cycle of reassessment; (4) exemptions and deductions; (5) successes and failures in using this tax; and (6) lessons to inform policy making and reform practice.
The deadline for submission is June 1, 2020. If you have any questions, please email Professor Yilin Hou, Center for Policy Research, Syracuse University, or call +1 315 443 9072.
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Call for Papers: EGIT – Economic Geography and International Trade
At this event, researchers who specialize in regional/urban economics and international trade come together to share ideas and comment on other’s research papers. The meeting encourages interaction and discussion among the researchers, so that new ideas and joint projects can be initiated. Any theoretical or empirical paper that discusses aspects of economic geography or international trade is welcome. This includes topics in urban economics, regional economics, new economic geography, international trade, international migration, foreign direct investment, and the economics of multinational firms.
Please submit papers by January 15, 2020 to OfficeGF@ifw-kiel.de. If you have any questions, please contact Professor Gabriel Felbermayr, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).
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Call for Papers: 11th ECB Conference on Forecasting Techniques — Avenues for the Next 20 Years
The conference will take place in Frankfurt am Main on June 8–9, 2020. The topics are: Uncertainty and the economic cycle; Robust forecasting in the presence of nonlinearities and structural breaks; Modelling and forecasting tail events; Forecasting with dynamic panels and with large VARs; Machine learning and scalable forecasting methods; Forecasting inflation, real activity, and exchange rates; Big and/or unstructured data and dimension reduction techniques.
The deadline for submission is February 19, 2020. For more information, please visit their website.
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