Berlin Maja Göpel is many things. Wikipedia identifies the 46-year-old as a “political economist, transformation researcher, sustainability expert and social scientist”. Göpel is in demand in all these roles, on radio and television she swears by the population to the transformation of the economy, to climate protection, to sustainability.
She did this until the summer of 2021 at the newly founded Hamburg “The New Institute”. Like Göpel, this think tank brings together different disciplines, from philosophy to natural sciences to economics.
According to Handelsblatt information, Göpel is now to bring this comprehensive approach to the venerable German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin. DIW President Marcel Fratzscher is working flat out to set up a “Center for Social-Ecological Transformation” at the institute. “Previous causal relationships are changing fundamentally, social polarization is increasing, and traditional economic and social policy must adapt,” says an internal draft concept.
The center is to be managed according to the ideas of Fratzscher transformation researcher Göpel, according to institute circles. Talks between the DIW board and Göpel have been going on at least since the beginning of the year. It is said that Fratzscher is an extremely important concern. He is also concerned with the external impact of the institute, which Göpel should strengthen.
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The President approves the plan for the new center. The new unit should be set up “in order to process the scientific issues associated with the socio-ecological transformation, to leverage synergies in the institute and to build bridges between subject areas,” he said through a spokeswoman. The Board of Directors has the support of the Board of Trustees, the Scientific Advisory Board and all management bodies in the Institute. Members of these bodies confirm this.
The DIW President is working flat out to set up a “Center for Social-Ecological Transformation” at the institute.
(Photo: dpa)
However, the spokeswoman left unanswered whether Göpel should assume the central role in the new center. The design would only be completed in the second half of the year. From institute circles, however, it is said that the plan is already quite concrete to guide Göpel to the DIW. And so the skepticism about the plan is becoming more and more concrete.
The DIW has so far been organized into three units, each with three departments. And a unit called Future Proofing and Sustainability already exists. Operationally, this is managed by the three department heads Claudia Kemfert (energy, transport, environment), Karsten Neuhoff (climate policy) and Tomaso Duso (companies & markets).
Energy economist Kemfert, in particular, is said not to be particularly enthusiastic about the possibility of Göpel being put in front of someone who comes from a completely different area and doesn’t have too much to do with an academically working economist. Kemfert, on the other hand, has been publishing in her field for years and is perhaps the most popular energy economist in the country. It is also said to be about the fear that Göpel could dispute Kemfert’s funding for research.
Not only Kemfert, but also other economists at the institute are not necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of bringing Göpel to the DIW. In 2001 she graduated as a media economist from the University of Siegen and received her doctorate in political economy from the Universities of Hamburg and Kassel in 2007. Among economists, political economy is anything but equal to normal, number-based economics.
Publications without academic standards
Although Göpel publishes a lot, almost none of it corresponds to academic standards, it is said. A prominent member of the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board also says: “The last thing DIW needs is someone who is only present in public because he once wrote two books.” Göpel himself and Kemfert also rejected offers of talks.
It is still unclear how the new center will be integrated into the organization of the DIW, whether as a separate department or as a staff unit in Fratzscher’s direct sphere of influence. It also depends on whether the DIW board of trustees has to give its consent, which could theoretically prevent Göpel’s appointment.
The management of the business cycle department at the DIW is still open. Geraldine Dany-Knedlik, who is already employed in the department, will take over half of the newly created dual leadership. The second post has been vacant for a year and various cancellations.
An agreement had finally been reached with Christian Breuer, who previously worked in Hamburg at the Leibniz Information Center for Economics (ZBW) and published the economics journal “Wirtschaftsdienst”. But Breuer recently canceled after the last few meters, according to Handelsblatt information.
Several vacancies in the DIW business cycle department
The DIW spokeswoman now says that the vacant position should be filled “shortly”. At the same time, there are still several other vacancies in the department, and the department is being reorganized to make it fit for the future.
This ultimately led to the DIW having to interrupt its collaboration on the joint diagnosis. The joint economic forecast prepared by the five major German institutes for the Federal Ministry of Economics is considered the flagship in this area.
The DIW only plans to produce its own economic forecasts again for the summer of 2023. In the following autumn, the department around Dany-Knedlik and the second head want to take part in the joint diagnosis again.
Spicy about it: In 2016, the DIW should actually have been left out of the tender for the joint diagnosis by the ministry. The joint diagnosis was only advertised for four institutes. But all of a sudden there were five, the officials of the then economics minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) took the DIW without further ado. The institute and in particular its President Fratzscher are considered to be close to the SPD. At the time, the Federal Ministry of Economics denied giving preference to the DIW.
More: “Climate of Intimidation”: Excitement at Germany’s largest economic research institute.