Rudolf Winter-Ebmer wrote (with Sylvia Frühwirth-Schnatter, Andrea Weber and Stefan Pittner) an article “Analysing plant closure effects using time-varying mixture-of-experts Markov chain clustering” in the top Statistics journal “Annals of Applied Statistics”.
Article in the IHS Repository (pdf)

The past months Facebook has been heavily criticized for multiple data violation issues regarding the unlimited and unsupervised collection of data. Maximilian Kasy writes about the consequences of Facebooks business model and the questionable use of data by big IT-companies in a comment on derstandard.at. 

How fair is the Zuckerberg-machine? (in German)

IHS-economist Benjamin Bittschi talks in the Ö1-Mittagsjournal about the open issues of the Italian government program. Even as Italy’s exit out of the Eurozone is off the table for now, it seems that the already highly indebted country will continue to make debts.

Listen to the program on the Ö1-Website (German only)

The Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) and Kommunalkredit Public Consulting conducted a study regarding the economic effects of investments in the areas of electric mobility, energy and water/sewage on behalf of the Austrian government. The aim was to determine the requirement for infrastructure in the mentioned areas by the year 2030 and estimate the economic effects on the value added, the rate of employment and the levying of taxes that would result from a correspondent creation of that infrastructure. The study was carried out by the IHS research group Companies, Industry, Regions.

Link to the study in the IHS repository (German)

German Economy Booming – But Air is Getting Thinner

The German economy continues to boom, but the air is getting thinner. The upturn in the world economy will continue to stimulate exports; and the domestic economy is also expected to remain buoyant thanks to the exceptionally favorable situation in the labor market. The fiscal measures outlined by Germany’s new government can be expected to stimulate demand. Annual average economic output can be expected to rise by 2.2 percent this year and by 2.0 percent in 2019. Employment will continue to see clear growth, but will be weakened by labor market shortages. The inflation rate will also rise gradually from 1.7 percent this year to 1.9 percent in 2019.
Links:
Press information of April 19, 2018 (pdf)

The Austrian Government presented their reform of the Health Insurance Funds that is about to be implemented by fall this year. According to plan the 21 different fund will be merged into four big funds. IHS-Health Economist Thomas Czypionka analyses the keystones of the reform on several media channels. 

ZIB 2 (in German)

Ö1-Morgenjournal (in German)

Der Standard (in German)

ATV Aktuell (in German)

Servus TV (in German)

Beate Littig wrote an article “Good Work? Sustainable work and sustainable development: a critical gender perspective from the Global North” published in the “Special Issue of Globalizations: Labour in the Web of Life”.
Article in the IHS Repository

Michael Jonas and Simeon Hassemer wrote the book contribution „Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer Verbraucherforschung in Österreich“ in „Multiperspektivische Verbraucherforschung – Ansätze und Perspektiven“. The book discusses dimensions, subjects and approaches of consumer research from different perspectives.

Buchlink: Multiperspektivische Verbraucherforschung (German)

The IHS research group for Techno-Science and Societal Transformation (TSST) participated in Roskilde, Denmark in the kick-off of their project “RiConfigure”. The project deals with Quadruple Helix innovation, RRI and governance challenges. IHS TSST is leading one of the social labs, the main methodological platform of the research, that looks at public service initiated quadruple helix innovation processes together with ÖBB and BMWF. The group is also leading the policy platform design and management work in the project as well as being a lead partner in the methodology development utilizing their experience in social labs via the NewHoRRIzon project. The project team is led by Elisabeth Frankus and Robert Braun.

Project “RiConfigure”

Project NewHoRRIzon