In 2015, IZA has achieved substantial progress in research, policy advice, media presence, scientific communication, and technology. In fact, the past year can be considered one of the most successful years of the institute. IZA’s work is well respected and highly reputed in the research and policy communities in Germany and globally.
IZA’s overriding aim is to find sustainable solutions for the problems in today’s labor markets and to actively shape tomorrow’s labor economics. As an economic research institute, IZA coordinates the largest worldwide network of economists focusing on the scientific analysis of national and international labor markets. Much of our success is owed to this network of IZA fellows and affiliates.
As a think tank, IZA also provides scientifically founded advice to decision makers. Academic excellence and integrity, both among local staff and network members, is a prerequisite to realizing IZA’s vision as a place of communication between academic science and political practice.
Policy advice based on independent research
At the core of IZA’s success is the systematic combination of research and evidence-based policy advice, nationally and globally, from an independent and non-partisan position. The IZA network is the platform for policy-oriented frontier research and its dissemination in labor economics.
These are some selected achievements in 2015:
- Policy-relevant research activities on key challenges of our time, including the digital economy, long-term unemployment, youth unemployment, migration, immigration law, refugees, environmental challenges, internet and big data, and the role of unions.
- Policy events for the EU Commission, the OECD, governments of Germany, China, France, the UK, Japan, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and the US Society of Government Economists.
- The IZA Prize events for Gary Fields (at ASSA 2015) and Jan Svejnar (at the IZA/World Bank Employment and Development conference, and a workshop in Prague.
- The IZA World of Labor project – an innovative knowledge hub for evidence in labor economics – now has about 500 papers contracted, among them 210 published and 100 in production. The contributions reach a large and growing community in the media, policy institutions (e.g. World Bank, OECD, ILO, EU Commission), the B20 Employment Task Force, as well as students and the general public.
- The IZA Journals, a series of five refereed open-access field journals, receive large numbers of submissions and regularly publish high-quality papers with a strong impact on academic and public debates.
- The IZA Newsrooms (German / English) communicate new research findings and opinions on labor market issues in a highly accessible way.
- The IDSC data center continues to provide a wide array of data resources, now also including access to the IZA evaluation data set survey.
Read more in a brief IZA 2015 Report (PDF).
