In an interview for the Salzburger Nachrichten, Hannes Winner argues that globalization has led to enormous welfare gains for industrialized and developing countries. At the same time, there are also market failures that significantly reduce these welfare effects (e.g. environmental effects, labor standards). Public regulation is therefore needed.

Tighter Covid-19 restrictions for the unvaccinated go hand in hand with greater willingness to get the shot. This is the finding of an ifo-study on vaccine willingness in the German-Austrian border region. The study was carried out by Hannes Winner and two collegues at ifo-Institute and Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Kevin Kloiber and Andreas Peichl. The study is discussed by the authors in a recent article in Die Presse (“Wie sich Corona-Regeln und Lockdowns auf die Impfbereitschaft auswirken”) and has been featured in many newspapers, including Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, Helsinki News or Newssite of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Paul Hofmarcher (principal investigator) and Niko Hauzenberger will analyse in a new research project more than 16,000 speeches of European central bankers by combining modern text mining techniques and state-of-the-art time series models. The aim of this project is to measure the effects central bank communication and its transmission channels have on the financial and the real economy. The project is supported financially by the Anniversary Fund of the Österreichische Nationalbank.