Magdalena Wicher will give a talk at the symposium: "Digitale Zukunft sozial gerecht gestalten" which is organised by the president of the Federal Council. Her contribution with the title: „Coding: Das leistet Bildung zur Stärkung von Demokratie und sozialer Gerechtigkeit“ will also be published in the green paper on shaping the digital future in a social just way. Registration for the event is due to June 27^th.

IHS researcher Beate Littig contributed to the article "Sustainable Labor - Promoting the Social-Ecological Transformation of the Labor Economy" that has been published in the journal GAIA. The article discusses the development of a concept of socio-ecological transformation towards a sustainable labor economy. It furthermore tackles the issue that labor still has an underrated role in the discourse about sustainability. The article therefore reevaluates the work of Karl Polanyi to get to a broader concept of labor that can be integrated in the discussion about sustainability.

The NewHoRRIzon project published its first policy brief, coordinated and written by Robert Braun of IHS and co-authored by Michael Bernstein of Genok with contributions from the NewHoRRIzon team. The policy brief aims at offering evidence based policy recommendations, informed by the first inputs of NewHoRRIzon research efforts across 19 social labs. The early research highlight steps that the EU has already initiated to advance RRI in H2020 programming. However, findings also point to numerous challenges for widespread and sustained implementation across H2020 programming and projects. First results indicate a range of policies that could be pursued to build capacity of the European R&I enterprise to realize RRI. The recommendations include a focus on capacity building and training of programme officers, evaluators, researchers, innovators, and stakeholders to learn more about ways that science and technology are embedded in society.

Read the full policy brief (in English)

IHS Director Martin Kocher contributed to a policy report by the European Network for Economic and Fiscal Policy Research (EconPol) about the potential role for a European minister of economy and finance in a European fiscal union (EMEF). The report lays out the main challenges along the current institutional settings and analyses proposed institutional changes, especially regarding the introduction of the European Monetary Fund (EMF). The EMEF, the report concludes, should take on several responsibilities in the ongoing reform process of the European Fiscal Union. 

Read the full report (in English)

FocusEconomics has analysed economic forecasters for more than 80 countries worldwide, awarding the top forecasters for main macroeconomic indicators of each country. We´re happy and proud that the IHS team with Helmut Hofer came in first place. 

Best Economic Forecaster Awards (English)
Article in Kurier (German)

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)

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 "Network for Socio-Ecological Transformation" hast been awarded the second place in the Sustainability Awards, organized by the Federal Ministry of Sustainability and Tourism and the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research. The network includes the University of Vienna, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt and the IHS which is represented by Beate Littig and Michael Jonas.

Sustainability Award Winners

A new article has been published in the IHS Working Paper series. Peter Koller, Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, wrote the paper "Überlegungen zur Weiterentwicklung der Gleichstellungsgrundlagen für öffentliche Universitäten", which is focused on gender equality policies for Austrian universities.

IHS Working-paper series

Curator Melissa Lumbroso invites artists at irregular intervals to create and present artworks in and for the spaces at Palais Strozzi. The second event of the series Kunst@IHS took place on June 4, 2018, presenting artworks by Payer Gabriel at IHS.
From left to right: Martin Gabriel, Micha Payer, Melissa Lumbroso, Martin Kocher.

IHS competence center Insight Austria has published a study that evaluates measurements against tobacco consumption among youth from a behavioral economic point of view. The findings support the call for a collective approach on a state level. Counseling and information can be an additional offer complementary to preventive measures. 

Rauchen bei Jugendlichen (in German)

The IHS TSST research group is running a series of one day consensus conferences in four European cities - Aarhus, Athens, Vienna and Vilnus - in the framework of the ENERI project on research ethics and integrity funded by the EU. The theme of the consensus conferences is "Expertise in ethics" to inform the European digital database of research ethics and integrity experts. The first of the consensus conferences is taking place in Vienna on 5 June, 2018. The methodology was developed by and the meetings are facilitated by Robert Braun and Elisabeth Frankus.

The European Commission published insights from the MoRRI project that was monitoring the evolution and benefits of responsible research and innovation in Europe over the past three and a half years. IHS-researchers Erich Griessler and Milena Wuketich took part in carrying out the study that anaylsed 25 indicators for eleven RRI-relevant dimensions. 

Download: Insights from the MoRRI project (English)