WZB - Berlin Social Science Center
Igor Alecsander / E+ / Getty Images Plus The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp decline in living standards and growing food insecurity in developing countries, an international research team shows.
martin-dm / E+ Getty Images A study published by Ruud Koopmans shows that countries that had travel restrictions in place by February or early March 2020 suffered fewer COVID-19 fatalities by mid-year than countries that acted later.
iStock / Getty Images Plus / Ca-ssis A team from the Institutions and Political Inequality Research Unit is exploring how country and government features relate to Covid-19 mortality.
Whether income influences ethical behavior is a topic of much debate. One approach holds that ethical acts are limited to those who can ‘afford’ them. A research team around WZB economist Agne Kajackaite is now shedding new light on this relation.
WZB series
A series of analyses, considerations and hypotheses by WZB researchers.
Booking an appointment for a Covid vaccination is tedious und like getting a ticket for the Olympic Games or a Lady Gaga concert, Rustamdjan Hakimov and Dorothea Kübler on restoring fairness and avoiding black markets.
International Theory special issue
Michael Zürn, director of the Global Governance Unit at WZB, published his"A Theory of Global Governance" (Oxford University Press) in 2018. It showcases Zürn’s long-lasting commitment to deepening and developing a comprehensive understanding of international relations. Now, a top international journal devotes a symposium to the monograph.
AleksandarNakic / getty images Does raising a child amidst the pandemic drive gender inequality? Surveys for 2020 suggest that parenting has unequally affected women and men in Germany, especially during the months of lockdown.
On July 13, 2020 a complete nation-wide ban was placed on the sale and transport of alcohol in South Africa. The project was accompanied by a team of researchers to explore the effects of this very unusual ban. Among them was Kai Barron, researcher of the unit Economics of Change. The team found out, that the policy reduced the number of unnatural deaths by 21 per day, or approximately 740 over the five-week period.
Jeanne Hagenbach is the new Karl W. Deutsch Visiting Professor at the WZB. She is a Research Director at the French National Research Institute (CNRS) and a Professor of Economics at Sciences Po Paris.
Fair treatment at work is not the norm for everyone. This is especially the case within the gig economy, where secure employment is lacking and trade unions have little influence. Now, the WZB and the Oxford Internet Institute intend to study the gig economy in a joint research project in order to develop fairness ratings for digital platforms, that are used as a lever to improve working conditions.
What’s on the majority's mind? For anyone doing research on public opinion, surveys and polls used to be the methods of choice. The advent of social media is paving the way for a plethora of new possibilities. Using the example of the hashtag, Sebastian Berg, Tim König and Ann-Kathrin Koster discuss the use of data gleaned from social media platform Twitter as a means of studying public sentiment and salient topics.
Job offers
Free text
Department “Institutions and Political Inequality”
Free text
Promotionskolleg „Gute Arbeit“
More Job offers
Research
The WZB Berlin Social Science Center investigates fundamental societal issues. Our focus is on education and work, markets and choice, migration, democracy and autocracy, international politics and law. At the WZB researchers from various disciplines work together – mainly from sociology, political science, economics, law and psychology.
