TRR 224:  Economic Perspectives on Societal Challenges: Equality of Opportunity, Market Regulation, and Financial Stability

• Subject Area: Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2018
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 326731373

The Collaborative Research Center (CRC) addresses three key societal challenges: (i) how to promote equality of opportunity; (ii) how to regulate markets in light of the internationalization and digitalization of economic activity; and (iii) how to safeguard the stability of the financial system.In a market economy, individual consumption and investment decisions and the prevailing market conditions shape personal well-being and life outcomes. An individual’s decision-making abilities and skills are largely formed in the family and at school. The prevailing market conditions are the result of decisions made by other participants in product and financial markets—markets that are embedded in the legal and regulatory system. This perspective suggests connections among three important policy areas: family and education policies; product market regulation; and financial market regulation.The CRC contributes to the foundations of decision-making in these three areas, starting from the premise that adequate answers to the above challenges must be based on representations of human behavior that are appropriate for the issues at hand. Based on a wide methodological spectrum of expertise in theoretical and empirical economics, the CRC assesses how specific policies and institutions affect economic outcomes and develops novel institutional and policy solutions.Strong complementarities among the projects within each area, across the three areas, and between the two locations provide the basis for internationally visible research that highlights economics as a social science addressing societal challenges. Targeted dissemination activities and the CRC researchers’ broad experience in communicating their findings to diverse audiences ensure the policy impact of this research.

• DFG Programme: CRC/Transregios

Current projects

• A01 - Origin, malleability and consequences of risk, time and social preferences (Project Heads Dohmen, Thomas ;  Falk, Armin ;  Zimmermann, Florian )
• A02 - Family decision-making and investments (Project Heads Grigolon, Laura ;  Pinger, Pia ;  Sovinsky, Ph.D., Michelle )
• A03 - Market failures and family policies (Project Heads Kuhn, Moritz ;  Tertilt, Michèle )
• A04 - Peer effects in school (Project Head Ciccone, Antonio )
• A05 - Behavioral determinants of inequalities in the labor market (Project Heads Dohmen, Thomas ;  Schiprowski, Amelie )
• B01 - Information aggregation and the role of transfers in mechanism design (Project Heads Moldovanu, Benny ;  Tröger, Thomas )
• B02 - Strategic information disclosure (Project Heads Auster, Ph.D., Sarah ;  Dilme, Francesc ;  Ganglmair, Bernhard ;  Hoffmann, Florian ;  Tarantino, Emanuele )
• B03 - Consumer protection and competition policy (Project Heads Krähmer, Daniel ;  Nocke, Volker ;  Schutz, Ph.D., Nicolas )
• B04 - Decentralized markets (Project Heads Lauermann, Stephan ;  Perrone, Helena ;  Rady, Sven ;  Stahl, Konrad Otto )
• B05 - Platform markets (Project Heads Franck, Jens-Uwe ;  Peitz, Martin ;  Rady, Sven )
• B06 - Trade policy and market structure (Project Head Fadinger, Ph.D., Harald )
• B07 - Policies for sustainability (Project Heads Götte, Lorenz ;  Wagner, Ulrich J. )
• C01 - Financial decisions over the life cycle (Project Heads von Gaudecker, Hans-Martin ;  Kaufmann, Ph.D., Katja Maria )
• C02 - Public interventions in asset markets (Project Heads Adam, Klaus ;  Dwarkasing, Narly ;  Schularick, Moritz )
• C03 - Shadow banking (Project Heads Hakenes, Hendrik ;  Saidi, Farzad ;  von Thadden, Ernst-Ludwig )
• C05 - Heterogeneity, financial frictions, and macroeconomic stabilization (Project Heads Bayer, Christian ;  Kuester, Keith ;  Meier, Matthias )
• Z - Central tasks of the Collaborative Research Center (Project Heads Nocke, Volker ;  Rady, Sven )
• Ö - Dissemination of results to non-academic audiences (Project Heads Bayer, Christian ;  Peitz, Martin ;  Schnabel, Isabel )

Completed projects

• C04 - Regulating asset managers (Project Heads Engert, Andreas ;  Schnabel, Isabel )

• Applicant Institution: Universität Mannheim
• Participating University: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Universität zu Köln
• Co-Applicant Institution: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
• Participating Institution: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
• Spokespersons: Professor Dr. Volker Nocke, since 1/2022; Professor Dr. Sven Rady, until 12/2021