News

09.01.2024 - Social Europe is at its strongest when it does not become a European welfare state ahead of time, argues Michael Thöne in the newly published final volume of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung's "Germany Trilogy". After "Deutschland – Ländersache?!“ (2020) and "Deutschland und sein Geld“ (2022), the third book "Deutschland und sein Sozialstaat. Erfolgsgeschichte mit Zukunft?" (2024), which was initiated by the late FiFo Policy Fellow Jens Bullerjahn, offers a broad kaleidoscope of numerous contributions and discussions on social issues and social policy on 540 pages. All three books can be downloaded and ordered here. 

12.12.2023 - The 2023 and 2024 federal budgets of Germany stand on the brink. This would not be necessary, as Michael Thöne shows in a digital presentation in Munich. Numerous subsidies and tax privileges have been evaluated over the last 20 years. Many of these have been assessed very critically - usually without any political consequences. The current budget crisis and the major transformations that Germany has to cope with provide a perfect opportunity to abolish outdated privileges on a wide front. This will free up a lot of funding for consolidation and mitigating selective hardships, for tax cuts and transformation financing. The side effect: a simpler and fairer tax system.

27.11.2023 - Especially in times of very tight public budgets, sustainability- and performance-oriented budgeting opens up new ways of implementing ambitious policies for the future with less money. With participation from the Bundestag, the Federal Chancellery, the Federal Audit Office and the three departments of the current 11th Spending Review, BMF, BMWK and BMUV, the FiFo-workshop at the Ministry for the Environment looked at the sound German preconditions for, as well as the important further steps towards sustainability-oriented budget modernization. Special thanks for the inputs from Deloitte and ZEW and in particular on Austrian green budgeting from the MoF in Vienna.

It is with great sadness that we announce that Klaus Mackscheidt passed away on 10 November 2023. With his demise, the University of Cologne has lost a passionate academic teacher, a great economist and an even greater person. We will miss him dearly. In 2023, Klaus Mackscheidt had been Director at the FiFo Institute for Public Economics for 50 years. He celebrated this unique anniversary, modest and tireless as ever, with unflagging productivity. His last two essays "Klimaschutz und Wohnungsbedarf" and "Sondervermögen versus Schuldenbremse" are published posthumously as FiFo Discussion Papers.

13.11.2023 - Faced with advanced climate change, a consistent environmental ethic requires a radical change in housing supply – more radical than what seems politically feasible. In FiFo Discussion Paper 23-1, Andreas Becker, Head of the Climate Monitoring Department at the German Weather Service, and Klaus Mackscheidt explore the need for adaptation, the options for flexible housing and for new construction only in the case of immigration. In their essay, they argue in favour of an ambitious policy of many small steps – knowing that the “big leaps” too often fail and result in (temporary) paralysis.