In this paper we deliver first causal evidence on the relationship between immigrant host country language proficiency and homeownership. Using an instrumental variable strategy, we find a substantial positive impact of language skills on the propensity to own a home and the quality of housing. While this effect is mediated by education and household income, our estimates also speak in favor of a direct effect. Our results highlight the importance of host-country-specific human capital and, in particular, language proficiency for socio-economic assimilation.

Deutschland ist ein Einwanderungsland, in dem Menschen zusammentreffen, die aus unterschiedlichen Herkunftsländern stammen. Sie orientieren sich zum Teil an Verhaltensregeln und Wertvorstellungen, die in Deutschland als ungewöhnlich oder „fremdartig“ gelten, was häufig Irritationen und Missverständnisse auslöst. Einen besonders sensiblen Bereich stellen Erziehungsvorstellungen und -praktiken dar, die nicht den in Deutschland gültigen pädagogischen Leitlinien entsprechen, an denen sich das Handeln von Fachkräften orientiert. Die Beiträge dieser Reihe vermitteln Kenntnisse über die kulturell vielfältigen Formen der Fürsorge für und Erziehung von Kindern. Dabei werden verschiedene Familienformen sowie unterschiedliche Vorstellungen über „gute Kindheit“, „richtige Erziehung“ und „emotionale Bindung“ thematisiert. Kenntnisse über die Vielfältigkeit von Fürsorge- und Erziehungsformen sind unbedingt notwendig im Umgang mit Familien, die anderen sozialen und kulturellen Kontexten entstammen und mit ihren Kindern auf eine Art und Weise umgehen, die westeuropäischen Mittelschichtsvorstellungen über „richtige“ Kindererziehung nicht entsprechen. Der vorliegende Beitrag beleuchtet die kulturelle Vielfalt von Familienkonstellationen, Fürsorgesystemen und Bindungsmustern und setzt sich kritisch mit der psychologischen Bindungstheorie auseinander, deren universale Gültigkeit aus sozialanthropologischer Perspektive zweifelhaft ist. Anhand diverser Fallbeispiele werden Praktiken multipler Fürsorgesysteme angeführt, die nahelegen, dass eine „sichere Bindung“ von Kindern nicht aus ihrer Beziehung zu ein oder zwei zentralen Bezugspersonen resultiert, sondern aus ihrer festen Einbettung in ein Beziehungsnetz. Die Inhalte richten sich an Fachkräfte aus den Bereichen Soziale Arbeit, Erziehung, Familienhilfe sowie Kinder- und Jugendpsychologie.

The sobering experiences with Western engagement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali in general and respective EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions in particular, suggest that EU efforts toward conflict resolution and state-building are systematically undermined by a lack of political settlement on the strategic level. This renders political stabilization via promoting good governance on the ground mostly futile. Moreover, the lack of local ownership in partner countries and coherent policies between the EU institutions and the EU Members States limit CSDP missions’ effectiveness and impact. The added value of this synoptic analysis rests with its combination of three analytical perspectives: 1) a systematic evaluation of missions’ impact effectiveness; 2) the inference of general and case-specific factors constraining and enabling EU crisis response effectiveness, and 3) the suggestion of avenues for theorizing on EU crisis response missions’ effectiveness. Moreover, this analysis draws on primary EU sources, and expert literature and incorporates additional data springing from interviews in Brussels as well as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Mali.

Das System des deutschen Bevölkerungsschutzes hat sich in weiten Teilen über Jahrzehnte weiterentwickelt und überwiegend bewährt, es weist aber nicht erst mit der Corona-Pandemie auch teils gravierende Schwächen auf. Im Folgenden skizziere ich „lessons to learn“ aus Forschersicht: Dazu werde ich zunächst die Ausgangslage erörtern und schreiben über 2. das Schutzziel des Bevölkerungsschutzes, 3. Gesellschaften im Wandel und veränderte Gefahren, 4. Stärken und Schwächen des Bevölkerungsschutzes in Deutschland und 5. Reformbedarfe. Im 6. Kapitel, dem Hauptteil dieses Berichtes, folgen dann konkrete Schlussfolgerungen mit „lessons to learn“. Der Bericht endet mit einem Vorschlag für ein „Nationales Forschungszentrum Resilienz und Schutz der Bevölkerung“.

The paper provides a meta-analysis of the structural impact of digitalisation on interna-tional law. It synthesises the contributions of this special issue [German Law Journal Special Issue (vol. 24/3) on “The Impact of Digitalisation on International Law”], showing how their findings are interrelated and which cross-cutting trends we can observe. It uses an analytical framework designed to assess structural changes in international law by analysing the impact that digitalisation has on key reference points: actors, norms and values. From this assessment, it draws the conclusion that digitalisation is changing and will continue to change structural features of international law.

The relationship between domestic and international law is generally conceptualized through the lens of three notions: monism, dualism and legal pluralism. Scholars refer to these concepts as a whole, while however often only meaning one aspect of the relationship. This can somewhat distort the discussion. This chapter thus offers an alternative way of engaging with the relationship between legal spaces. It disentangles the different aspects that are relevant for theorizing how we understand this relationship. Regarding the analytical dimension of this relationship, the chapter outlines how the three concepts engage with the (apparent) dichotomies of unity or plurality of law(s), autonomy or intertwinement and hierarchy or heterarchy of legal spaces. The normative dimension is shaped, in particular, by questions pertaining to the notion of law as well as by values such as coherence and diversity and their impact on resolving conflicts between norms stemming from different legal spaces.

This Working Paper draws on the mounting research produced by economists and political scientists that links support for populism with the economic, social and cultural grievances arising from record levels of economic inequality, driven by globalisation, in particular free trade and the technology revolution. It seeks to identify the sources of the harmful effects of free trade in WTO law and free trade agreements, and suggests possible measures to address these harmful effects. It finds in particular that the limited exceptions to free trade that were available to States during the "embedded liberalism" of the first three decades of international trade under the GATT 1947 have been eroded to the extent that the national "policy space" available to regulate in the public interest to avoid free trade's negative economic, social and cultural consequences are no longer adequate. Ever-deepening neoliberal trade relations since the late 1970s and under the 1994 WTO Agreements have largely removed the ability of States to protect nascent or vulnerable industries and jobs, and to protect national social and cultural values and interests. If international law is to play a role in mitigating economic inequality and reducing its potency in driving populism, ways and means to reopen this policy space for States need to be considered.

This paper consists of two parts: In the first part, some of the challenges with which the Internationaal Criminal Court is currently confronted are being presented. First of all, the article will describe the current state of the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statue. Afterwards, the article analyses the Court’s efforts to deal with cases against third-country nationals and the challenges it is facing in that regard. In addition, the Court’s case law will be analyzed in order to determine an increasing ‘emancipation’ of the case law of the International Criminal Court from international humanitarian law. The second part of the paper will briefly discuss the role of domestic international criminal law and domestic courts in the further development and enforcement of international criminal law. As an example of the role that domestic courts may have in clarifying classic issues in international law, the judgment of the German Supreme Court of January 28, 2021 (3 StR 564/19), which deals with the status of costumary international law on functional immunity of State officials before domestic courts, shall be assessed.

The question of whether the monitoring bodies have competence concerning reservations (alone or shared with state parties) is at the center of the discussion of reservations to human rights treaties that has occupied many international legal scholars over the last few decades. The Istanbul Convention’s treaty monitoring body, the Group of experts on action against violence against women and domestic violence (GREVIO), is the only human rights treaty monitoring and adjudication body with a direct competence (one that stems directly from the treaty) concerning reservations. However, as practice to date shows, it does not make much use of this power. This is a big disappointment considering all the efforts of other bodies in the past and the doctrinal positions of various scholars. The main aims of the article are threefold: to present GREVIO's practice to date concerning reservations, to provide a brief historical overview of how other human rights treaty bodies have approached their role concerning reservations, and finally, to attempt to explain why GREVIO has abandoned a more proactive position on reservations.

Mainly in reaction to the use of torture by the United States after the attacks of 9/11, international relations scholars began asking under which circumstances the content of an international norm changes and at which point it becomes void of its normative content if it is repeatedly violated, a concept known as “norm erosion”. International lawyers have until very recently not engaged with this debate. This working paper aims to change that by looking at the example of the prohibition of torture to display legal scholarship perspectives on how norms of treaty law and customary law come into being, how treaties can be modified or renounced, how customary law can be changed, as well as how re-interpretation processes take place that may affect a rule’s content, scope and effect. Furthermore, international relations research has developed criteria which allow to determine whether a certain norm is more robust and thus resilient to change and erosion. These criteria also find a correspondence in the rules of international law and can be translated to, and framed in, international law terms. The findings from the perspective of international law reinforce international relations research which has identified the prohibition of torture to be very robust and resilient. Also, both disciplines underline that pure non-compliance does neither lead to norm change nor to norm erosion. Although international law has not played a decisive role in most international relations research on norm erosion, in the end, both disciplines still arrive at similar explanations under which circumstances norm change and norm erosion take place. Through uncovering this, the working paper also demonstrates how interdisciplinary scholarship may strengthen mono-disciplinary scholarship by arriving at the same conclusions via different avenues.

Four years after the much-discussed voting on limitations and exceptions to functional immunity of State officials (draft article 7) by the International Law Commission (ILC), the ILC has provisionally adopted new draft articles at its session in 2021. These proposals set out procedural safeguards of immunity of State officials. Such procedural safeguards are essential for a balanced approach to the topic of immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdictionwhich will help to overcome divisions on the matter in the international community and within the ILC. This may pave the way for an international treaty on immunity of State officials which would provide crucial guidance for practitioners dealing with cases of immunity of State officials. However, while the type and structure of the procedural safeguards provisionally adopted by the ILC are helpful, some key aspects remain unclear and should be refined.

High nonresponse rates have become a rule in survey sampling. In panel surveys there occur additional sample losses due to panel attrition, which are thought to worsen the bias resulting from initial nonresponse. However, under certain conditions an initial wave nonresponse bias may vanish in later panel waves. We study such a "Fade away" of an initial nonresponse bias in the context of regression analysis. By using a time series approach for the covariate and the error terms we derive the bias of cross-sectional OLS-estimates of the slope coefficient. In the case of no subsequent attrition and only serial correlation an initial bias converges to zero. If the nonresponse affects permanent components the initial bias will decrease to a limit which is determined by the size of the permanent components. Attrition is discussed here in a worst case scenario, where there is a steady selective drift into the same direction as in the initial panel wave. It is shown that the fade away effect dampens the attrition effect to a large extent depending on the temporal stability of the covariate and the dependent variable. The attrition effect may by further reduced by a weighted regression analysis, where the weights are estimated attrition probabilities on the basis of the lagged dependent variable. The results are discussed with respect to surveys with unsure selection procedures which are used in a longitudinal fashion, like access panels.

Die Verknüpfung von administrativen Prüfungsdaten mit Umfragedaten zum sozialen Hintergrund der Studierenden, ihrer Studienfinanzierung, ihrer Motivation für den gewählten Studiengang sowie den Noten für die Zulassung zum Studiengang vermeidet die Schwachstellen üblicher studentischer Befragungen mit hohem Nonresponse und Erinnerungsfehlern. Dieser Ansatz wird hier zum Vergleich von fünf Masterstudiengängen am FB Wirtschaftswissenschaft der Freien Universität Berlin benutzt. Die Studierenden wurden auf der jeweiligen Auftaktveranstaltung ihrer Studiengänge befragt und über die ersten 6 Fachsemester hinsichtlich des Erwerbs von Studienpunkten, dem Abschluss ihres Masterstudiums sowie den dabei erzielten Noten begleitet. Aufgrund der Koppelung mit den administrativen Daten der gesamten Kohorte konnte ein Erfolgsbias der teilnahmebereiten Studierenden festgestellt werden, der aber durch eine geeignete Gewichtung über die Responserate gut beherrschbar ist. Wir vergleichen die Studiengänge in verschiedenen Phasen: Studieneingangsphase, Erreichen der Regelstudienzeit und Abschluss bis zum 6 Fachsemester. Weiterhin wird der Einfluss von Hintergrundmerkmalen auf die erreichte Note beim Studienabschluss untersucht. In der Studieneingangsphase ergeben sich deutliche Unterschiede zwischen den Studiengängen. Konditioniert man allerdings auf den Studienerfolg im ersten Semester, so verschwinden diese Unterschiede für die zweite Studienphase und den Abschluss des Studiums. Überraschend ist der geringe Einfluss der Bachelor-Note auf den Studienerfolg und die erzielte Master-Note. Die Ergebnisse zeigen die Möglichkeit auf, einen möglichen Studienabbruch schon relativ sicher anhand der erzielten Studienpunkte in der Studieneingangsphase zu erkennen.

This paper analyzes the time-varying credibility of the Fed’s inflation target in an empirical macro model with asymmetric information, where the public has to learn about the actual inflation target from the Fed’s interest rate policy. To capture the evolving communication strategy of the Fed, I allow the learning rule and the structural shock variances to change across monetary policy regimes. I find that imperfect credibility is pronounced during the Volcker Disinflation and to a lesser extend in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis. The announcement of the 2% target in 2012 did not affect the learning rule strongly but reduced the variance of transitory monetary policy shocks. The results caution against equating long-term inflation expectations of professionals with the perceived inflation target.

In Anbetracht der gegenwärtigen Krisenkomplexität haben aktuelle Zukunftsbilder das Potential, Ängste und Aversionen auszulösen, sodass eine Vermeidung der Auseinandersetzung mit Zukünften die Folge sein kann. In diesem Zusammenhang wird im Feld der Zukunfts- und Transformationsforschung eine verstärkte Auseinandersetzung mit Emotionen gefordert. Die Effekte von Emotionen auf individuelle und kollektive Perspektiven der Krisenbewältigung und Zukunftsgestaltung stehen hierbei im Fokus. Innerhalb der deutschsprachigen Zukunftsforschung blieb die professionelle Einbeziehung von Emotionen bislang überwiegend unberücksichtigt. Die Arbeit untersucht, inwiefern Emotionen das Denken und Gestalten von Zukünften beeinflussen können. Psychologische, neurowissenschaftliche und lerntheoretische Perspektiven werden herangezogen, um das Verständnis von emotionalen Dimensionen in Antizipation und Reflexion von Zukünften zu vertiefen. Es zeigt sich, dass Emotionen untrennbarer Bestandteil von Prospektionen sind, d.h. dass ein Denken über Zukünfte ohne emotionale Beteiligung nicht möglich ist, als auch, dass Emotionen die Art und Weise prägen, wie über Zukünfte gedacht wird. In der Arbeit werden die Begriffe des „Zukunftsmutes” und der „emotional futures literacy” entwickelt. Insbesondere durch den Bezug zu transformativen Lerntheorien werden theoretische und praktische Implikationen für eine zeitgenössische, kritische Zukunftsforschung abgeleitet. Durch die Integration der Reflexion von Emotionen kann die Auseinandersetzung mit der Bedrohung von wünschenswerten Zukünften unterstützt und nachhaltig demokratische Entwicklungsperspektiven können eröffnet werden.

Sechs Lokaljournalist:innen aus Deutschland haben sich für diese Studie auf eine Reise in die Zukunft begeben und ihre Vorstellungen eines idealen Lokaljournalismus im Jahr 2041 in Form einer Geschichte aufgeschrieben. Über die Kunstform Geschichte gelangen frei imaginierte Zukunftsvorstellungen und damit die individuellen aber sozio-kulturell geprägten Perspektiven der Praktiker:innen in die Forschung. Eine systematische Metaphernanalyse hinterfragt kritisch die sprachliche Konstruktion der Zukunftsgeschichten. Die herausgearbeiteten metaphorischen Konzepte Lokaljournalismus ist Gebäude, Lokaljournalismus ist Dienstleistung, Lokaljournalismus ist Ausstellung, Lokaljournalismus ist Transportsystem und Lokaljournalismus ist Körper sowie zwei hybride Konzepte werden im Hinblick darauf interpretiert, was sie hervorheben, verschleiern und damit erklären. Sie zeigen, welche Funktionen Lokaljournalist:innen in Zukunft zuvorderst zugeschrieben werden und wie Öffentlichkeit im Lokalen hergestellt werden könnte. Die Ergebnisse können als Hypothese für einen idealen Lokaljournalismus im Jahr 2041 gesehen werden sowie als Ausgangspunkt für die Entwicklung alternativer Zukünfte.

Meta, formerly the Facebook Company, faces immense pressure from users, governments and civil society to act transparently and with accountability. Responding to such calls, in 2018, it announced plans to create an independent oversight body to review content decisions. Such a forum is now in place in the form of the Oversight Board. To Meta’s credit, the speed at which the Oversight Board has been established is remarkable. Within two years, a global consultation process was completed with input obtained from users as well as experts, the regulatory infrastructure for the Oversight Board built, its members selected, and the first decisions of the Board already rendered in January 2021. No expense has been spared. Facebook has created a trust worth 130 million US dollars to fund the Oversight Board. With its institutional structure in place, and plenty of resources to tap into, the Oversight Board could have a real impact on how some transnational disputes are resolved. Thus, the Oversight Board may very well be setting the direction for how tech companies in particular, and multinational corporations in general, go about providing grievance mechanisms to individuals who their actions adversely impact. Through a study of the Oversight Board, this paper considers whether we are witnessing the birth of a special type of ‘transnational hybrid adjudication’. The paper first clarifies what is meant by the phrase ‘transnational hybrid adjudication’. And then using the example of the Oversight Board, it considers whether the Oversight Board can properly be characterised as a transnational adjudicative body that joins the myriad of other international dispute resolution mechanisms that exist today. Giving an affirmative answer to that question, the paper finally discusses whether the Oversight Board is a new type of adjudicative mechanism that could have a systemic impact on international law, or an experiment with limited relevance.

Using a new experimental design, we compare how subjects form beliefs in an investorclient setup under varying degrees of liability. Our results re ect the importance of social preferences when making investment decisions for others. We show that when investors have no liability, those with stronger social preferences are more optimistic about the probability that their investment results in a gain. In other words, we nd that social preferences appear to be correlated with motivated beliefs. This nding suggests the existence of cognitive biases in nancial decision-making and supports the recent literature on the formation of motivated beliefs under limited liability (Barberis, 2015; B enabou and Tirole, 2016).