In dieser Masterarbeit wird die zukünftige Entwicklung der Beziehungen zwischen der Euro-päischen Union (EU) und Georgien im Kontext geopolitischer Umbrüche und wachsender Unsicherheit untersucht. Im Zentrum steht das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen der politi-schen Stabilität Georgiens und der Erweiterungsbereitschaft der EU. Es gilt als entscheidend für mögliche Integrationspfade. Vor dem Hintergrund des russischen Angriffskriegs gegen die Ukraine gewinnt die EU-Erweiterung zunehmend an sicherheits- und geopolitischer Bedeu-tung. Methodisch basiert die Arbeit auf einer explorativen Szenarioanalyse nach der Quad-rantenmethode. Die empirische Grundlage bilden leitfadengestützte Experteninterviews sowie eine systematische Literaturauswertung. Darauf aufbauend werden vier konsistente Zukunftsszenarien bis 2035 entwickelt, die unterschiedliche Stabilitäts- und Erweiterungs-dynamiken abbilden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Beziehungen zwischen der EU und Ge-orgien wesentlich von Reformprozessen in Georgien sowie von der politischen und institu-tionellen Kohärenz der EU abhängen. Während unter günstigen Bedingungen gemeinsame Fortschritte möglich sind, verweisen alternative Szenarien auf Risiken wie autoritäre Entwick-lungen, Integrationsstagnation und geopolitische Neuorientierungen. Die Arbeit verdeutlicht, dass die EU-Erweiterung nicht allein durch formale Beitrittskriterien bestimmt wird, sondern zunehmend strategischen und geopolitischen Logiken folgt.

We prove that any stable matching mechanism suffers from systematic inefficiency of striking magnitude: in large random markets, any stable allocation is Pareto-inefficient with high probability, and almost all students can simultaneously improve their placements without harming anyone else. We establish this result by showing that the envy digraph generated by the student-proposing Deferred Acceptance mechanism contains a unique giant strongly connected component, implying that nearly all students are improvable via trading cycles. Finally, we show that every maximal cycle packing covers almost all students, revealing a surprising asymptotic equivalence among all efficient mechanisms that Paretodominate DA.

A persistent gender gap in inflation expectations, i.e., women systematically reporting higher expected inflation than men on average, has been documented across countries and over time, yet its underlying causes remain under debate. Using more than half a million responses from the ECB Consumer Expectations Survey and a double machine learning framework that provides valid inference on many dimensions of heterogeneity at once, I show that there is no single gender gap: individualized gaps range from roughly −1 to +5 percentage points. This heterogeneity is shaped primarily by subjective belief-formation variables, such as forecast uncertainty and the rounding of inflation beliefs, and only to a much lesser extent by objective ones, such as financial literacy. When inflation is high enough to attract consumers’ attention, the average gap narrows, but the distribution of individual gaps fans out, widening precisely for economically vulnerable women. Since the women who diverge most from men hold the most imprecise beliefs, communication that reduces ambiguity, rather than solely providing information, is a promising policy lever.

This study provides the first firm-level evidence on how the residence country's double tax relief method and tax sparing provisions in asymmetric tax treaties affect foreign investment by OECD multinational enterprises in low-and-middle income countries. Combining unconsolidated subsidiary-level data for 2005–2016 with detailed tax treaty information, the analysis distinguishes between investment entry (extensive margin), investment intensity (intensive margin), and the directness of the investment route. The results show that treaty-induced changes in the residence country's relief method do not affect subsidiary creation once investment routing is taken into account, while tax sparing provisions consistently encourage market entry. At the intensive margin, improvements in the residence country's relief method increase investment intensity only for firms investing through indirect routes, whereas tax sparing provisions have either no effect or are negatively associated with reinvestment. These findings reveal substantial heterogeneity concealed by aggregate FDI data and demonstrate that the investment effects of tax treaty provisions differ across firms depending on whether they enter or expand, as well as on the route through which they invest.

This paper develops a formal framework for the establishment and expansion of a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) from the perspective of Shareholder Socialism. After reviewing the heterogeneous origins and financing arrangements of existing SWFs, we present a dynamic model that characterizes feasible pathways through which advanced economies can build a large-scale public equity fund without relying on natural resource revenues or foreign-exchange reserves. To evaluate the time required to reach target fund-to-GDP ratios under plausible scenarios, we use Monte Carlo simulations that account for return uncertainty. The results indicate that a sizeable public wealth fund can be accumulated within twenty to thirty years.

Inflation misperceptions of consumers complicate the conduct and communication of monetary policy and can undermine the credibility of the central bank’s inflation target. This paper empirically investigates the determinants of inflation misperceptions by extending a rational inattention model to incorporate distorted signals from salient prices. We estimate the model using rich micro-level panel data for the euro area drawn from the ECB Consumer Expectations Survey. We find that consumers misperceive inflation both because they are inattentive to inflation and because they overweight food price inflation relative to headline inflation. In contrast, distortions stemming from energy prices are not significant. Financially literate consumers exhibit lower inflation misperceptions and greater attention to inflation, while women have more pronounced inflation misperceptions and place larger weights on salient prices. Finally, we show that attention to inflation is higher and misperceptions are lower in response to inflationary than to disinflationary news.

This paper develops a political-economy game of skilled exit, redistribution, repression, and regime survival. Skilled workers are economically valuable because they become entrepreneurs, pay taxes, and generate productive externalities for low-skilled workers. They are also politically dangerous because they can enter political competition in democracy, participate in revolutionary collective action in autocracy, or leave the country altogether. Governments therefore face a strategic tradeoff. Retaining skilled citizens raises output and fiscal capacity, but it can also increase electoral or revolutionary pressure. Allowing skilled citizens to leave weakens development, but it may relax the incumbent’s political constraint. In democracy, redistribution toward the low-skilled majority lowers the return to skilled entrepreneurship and can induce exit. In autocracy, exit barriers and repression are alternative technologies of political survival: hard dictatorships can restrict exit and extract from skilled workers, while soft dictatorships may tolerate emigration because it reduces the pool of potential protesters. We characterize this logic in a one-shot benchmark and a dynamic extension with persistent brain drain and absorbing political turnover. We also allow repression costs to rise with the human-capital intensity of the economy, so that repression becomes more destructive precisely when skilled labor is more productive. The model yields a comparative regime logic of skilled exit: emigration is highest where exit directly relaxes the incumbent’s political constraint, as in soft dictatorship, or where redistribution lowers the domestic return to skilled entrepreneurship, as in redistributive democracy; it is lower in elitist democracy and lowest in hard dictatorship.

This paper argues that there is an increasing need to trust not only organizations but whole interorganizational networks. That is, there is a strong and growing demand for building what we call ‘network trust’. Differentiating between different forms of network governance, applying a practice-based perspective and using the well-known example of the StarAlliance, the paper demonstrates how network trust can emerge within a network, and how external stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers and regulators, can develop trust in a network as whole. Also, we will show that, in turn, network trust can help produce and reproduce trust in single members of a network. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research.

Ökologische und soziale Nachhaltigkeit gehen nicht immer Hand in Hand.Dies zeigt sich aktuell bei den Maßnahmen zur Dekarbonisierung des Verkehrssektors: Der Umstieg von Autos mit Verbrennungsmotoren auf Elektroautos soll Treibhausgasemissionen reduzieren, führt allerdings zu Restrukturierungen und Personalabbau bei Automobilherstellern und Zulieferern. Eine sozial gerechte Transformation, bei der die Verteilung von Kosten und Nutzen der Dekarbonisierung der Wirtschaft von allen Beteiligten als fair empfunden wird („just transition“), ist aber ein erklärtes Ziel der Internationalen Arbeitsorganisation(ILO) der Vereinten Nationen. In ihrer tripartiten Struktur sind die Regierungen der Mitgliedstaaten sowie Arbeitgeber-und Arbeitnehmerorganisationen vertreten. Wie kann die Dekarbonisierung der Wirtschaft sozial gerecht implementiert werden?Was brauchen Arbeitgeber und Arbeitnehmervertretungen auf lokaler Ebene, um eine sozial gerechte Transformation zu gestalten? Diesen Fragen gehen wir in einer Fallstudie nach.

An ageing labor force is associated with a change in labor market dynamics. Individuals face different hazard rates of entering or leaving any labor market state throughout their lifetime. The volatility of transitions is different for subpopulations defined by gender and age. This study aims at revealing differences in the dynamics of labor market transitions for those groups on a four state labor market (full-time employment, part-time employment, unemployment, inactivity) as well as at decomposing the U.S. unemployment volatility with regard to these dynamics.

Why does industrialization in some cases generate social consolidation and in other cases political conflict? This paper argues that the answer depends on how industrial finance is allocated. I develop a dynamic political-economy model in which the government channels external liquidity into industry under either centralized or decentralized finance. Under decentralization, adverse shocks harden budget constraints and permit replacement of inefficient incumbents by new entrepreneurs. Under centralization, by contrast, the government is more likely to refinance inefficient incumbents, soften budget constraints, and block entry. Industrialization then generates concentrated rents and a higher risk of conflict. I interpret late imperial Russia as a historically revealing case of this mechanism. Rather than treating Russia as the sole object of interest, the paper uses it to motivate a general theory of industrialization under monopoly.

We study the political careers of provincial governors in Iran and ask whether competence and loyalty shape the risk of exit from office. Using province–year panel data with province and year fixed effects, we implement two IV strategies to address selection into hard postings and measurement error. To identify competence, we use a shift–share (Bartik) “merit shifter” that interacts predetermined provincial exposure to oil-linked fiscal capacity with national oil-price movements, generating plausibly exogenous variation in measured performance across provinces over time. To identify loyalty, we instrument parliamentary turnout with election-year voting-cost shocks: election-day temperature (and nonlinear transformations) interacted with an election-year indicator, which shifts participation when voting is salient but is orthogonal to governor retention decisions conditional on fixed effects and controls. Our estimates show that higher instrumented competence increases the probability of exit, especially along the rotation margin, while loyalty has weaker and less stable effects once endogeneity is addressed. We explain the competence–exit link through a performance-driven rotation model: the center deploys high performers to difficult provinces and then reassigns them quickly once acute constraints are relieved. In that sense, crisis posts are designed for short tenures (“send → fix → move”). An alternative discipline mechanism may suggest that competent governors face removal when their actions threaten entrenched interests. Nevertheless, this mechanism receives less consistent support in baseline specifications. Identification is strong for competence (weak-IV-robust tests reject the null), and the core findings are stable across aligned specifications. Substantively, the evidence suggests that managerial capacity is leveraged intensively rather than rewarded with tenure, underscoring the importance of distinguishing rotation from punishment in authoritarian personnel management.

Using cross-country data for 167 countries with broad post–World War II coverage and historical extensions to earlier periods, we quantify how deficits, taxes, and civilian spending respond to increases and decreases in military spending. On average, deficit financing dominates: a 1 percentage point (pp) increase in military spending (as share of GDP) is associated with 62% deficit financing, 20% higher taxation, and 18% reductions in civilian spending. The composition shifts with intensity, as larger armaments are accompanied by deeper civilian cuts. Fiscal space systematically moderates these patterns: low-debt countries rely primarily on borrowing—funding a 1 pp increase by 75% deficits, 11% taxation, and 14% cuts—whereas high-debt countries adjust more through taxation (33%) and civilian spending cuts (26%). Armaments and disarmaments are asymmetric. Disarmaments only partially reverse prior fiscal expansions, sustaining elevated civilian spending as a peace dividend: a 10 pp decline in the military share raises the civilian share by 5 pp, whereas a symmetric increase reduces it by less than 2 pp. By quantifying these adjustment patterns jointly across fiscal instruments, countries, and episodes of armament and disarmament, we provide an integrated global perspective that connects insights from the literatures on war finance, fiscal space, and ratchet effects. We conclude by discussing implications for the current wave of rearmament.

We study how inflation expectations can be anchored through different forms of communication and whether such anchoring survives political change. Using a two-wave panel RCT around the 2025 German federal election, we show that providing the ECB’s target and projections lowers expectations by about 100 basis points. We then introduce a teaching-style intervention explaining the ECB’s institutional role using simple language and an intuitive metaphor, which proves equally effective. Treatment effects persist through the election, and partisan polarization remains modest. Our results suggest that well-designed communication– combining quantitative information with clear explanations of institutional responsibility–can durably anchor beliefs even in changing political environments.

Der Gesprächsartikel analysiert die aktuellen Kontroversen um die deutsche Berichterstattung über den Krieg in Gaza vor dem Hintergrund politischer Polarisierung, sinkenden Medi-envertrauens und verschobener öffentlicher Sagbarkeitsgrenzen. Im Zentrum stehen Auseinandersetzungen um journalistische Standards, die Auswahl und Bewertung von Quellen, die Sichtbarkeit unterschiedlicher Leidensperspektiven sowie die Frage, wem im deutschen Kontext öffentliche Legitimität zugesprochen wird. Dabei zeigt sich, dass mediale Debatten nicht nur die Einordnung von Gewalt in Israel und Palästina betreffen, sondern auch eng mit Aushandlungen über Protest, Solidarität und Zugehörigkeit in Deutschland verknüpft sind. Der Beitrag knüpft an eine Podiumsdiskussion im Rahmen der Reihe INTERACT Conversations an der Freien Universität Berlin an und versammelt Perspektiven aus Aktivismus, Kommunikationswissenschaft und Politikwissenschaft. Diskutiert werden die Bedingungen journalistischer Arbeit in hochpolarisierten Konflikten, die Rolle von Sprache und Deutungsrahmen sowie die Auswirkungen medialer Praktiken auf gesellschaftliche Polarisierung. Zugleich fragt der Artikel nach Möglichkeiten differenzierter Berichterstattung und nach der Verantwortung von Journalismus, Wissenschaft, Politik und Zivilgesellschaft.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this paper exploits withinsibling differences in vocational coursework credits taken during high school to estimate their effects on educational and labor market outcomes. I find that additional vocational coursework reduces four-year college attendance without affecting college graduation among those who enroll, and is associated with higher annual earnings that persist into the mid-thirties. This evidence suggests that vocational education helps students realize their comparative advantage and sort into different educational paths, which benefit their labor market outcomes. The findings point to high school vocational education providing sustained economic benefits without compromising overall educational attainment, and benefiting students with diverse educational trajectories.

This paper estimates the causal effect of renewable water conditions and water use on violent conflict in rural agrifood systems. We implement a fixed-effects instrumental variables strategy that uses plausibly exogenous temperature and precipitation shocks to instrument multiple water outcomes. Annual specifications are imprecise, but five-year aggregations yield sharper inference and show that higher renewable freshwater availability significantly reduces conflict risk. Water use margins are central: freshwater withdrawals are associated with lower conflict, whereas higher aggregate water-use efficiency is associated with increased conflict risk. Overall, the results indicate that climate-driven water shocks operate through distinct channels— stocks, withdrawals, and efficiency—and that empirical conclusions depend critically on time aggregation and the definition of water being instrumented. The findings imply that climate adaptation and water policy should be paired with conflictsensitive governance and improved measurement of local water use and access.

The weaponization of agricultural trade has once again emerged as critical in the study of modern geopolitics due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Although Russia has used its wheat exports as a means of enhancing its geopolitical influence over countries in the Global South, evidence on the impact of such a policy is scarce. This paper assesses the impact of reliance on Russian and Ukrainian wheat imports on food security and political development in sub-Saharan African countries. The panel data for the analysis come from 35 African countries between 2005 and 2024. The Bartik-style shift-share instrumental variables (IV) model utilizes exogenous variables derived from the historical shares of wheat that African countries imported from Russia and Ukraine multiplied by the export contractions caused by geopolitical conflicts in 2014 (Crimea annexation) and 2022 (full-scale invasion of Ukraine). The dependence on Russian wheat has had a uniquely adverse impact upon the development of sub-Saharan Africa, whereas this has not been the case for the dependence on Ukrainian wheat. Prior to 2022, the dependence on Russian wheat had no significant impact upon the reduction of undernourishment in Africa, but had a significant impact on the rise of political instability. After 2022, though, the Russian wheat played a crucial role in the food insecurity within the region. While democratic indices remained unaffected by Russian wheat, other geopolitical factors such as U.S. development aid and Chinese development finance were not able to counter the negative effects of Russian wheat exports. Our findings identify an independent vector of autocratic influence enabled through Russian agricultural exports. For sustainable political development within sub-Saharan Africa, the diversification of staple food suppliers is urgently required.