Competence Field "Empirical Economic Research"

Within the economic sciences, empirical economic research is continuously gaining in importance. Current debates on the causes and consequences of social and economic developments as well as on the focus of economic policy are increasingly based on the results of empirical research. In the competence field Empirical Economic Research (EWF), approximately one hundred researchers from the three UA Ruhr universities and the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, as well as roughly the same number of PhD students, are currently exploring issues relevant to empirical economic research. The strategic goal of this cooperation is to establish the EWF competence field as an internationally visible center for empirical economic research by bundling excellent research.

The EWF competence field incorporates the diverse competencies existing at the partner institutions in the fields of applied empirical economic research, method development and scientific policy advice into a joint framework, thus facilitating their integration and benefiting from their complementarities across all three universities. Researchers from the three economics faculties at the UA Ruhr, the only statistics faculty in Germany at the TU Dortmund University, and the RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen work closely together on this project. Moreover, the Research Data Center Ruhr at RWI provides a large number of data sets for empirical research. All researchers involved in the competence field apply econometric methods in the empirical analysis of economic relationships and develop them further in a problem-specific manner. The fields of application cover a broad spectrum of economic sciences. The resulting diversity of applications and methods leads to high synergies within the competence field. Research areas within the competence field include labor, health, energy and climate as well as investments.

Perspectives

The research collective bundled here applies econometric methods from three overarching perspectives. The first perspective is the microeconomic view ("micro"). It analyzes legal and natural individuals and thus captures the behavior of people or companies as well as their interaction in households or industries, typically in a bottom-up approach. If you aggregate economic actors sufficiently, you arrive at the macroeconomic perspective ("macro"), which deals with the question of the effects of these aggregates on and among each other (top-down).

A horizontal screen with lots of technical data, a magnifying glass zooms in on a bar chart

Microeconomics and macroeconomics together form the classic field of economics as the science that deals with human behavior with regard to alternative uses in the face of limited resources. Numerous questions in both fields have spatial aspects that cover the entire spectrum from local to global spaces and, due to their great importance for economic activity, political processes and social identity, represent an independent level of analysis ("regio").

What all three perspectives have in common is the use of data to answer their respective research questions. Another core element of the activities is therefore the Ruhr Research Data Center at RWI, which collects and processes data sets and makes them available to the scientific community. The quantitative analysis decision requires comprehensive knowledge of statistical methods as well as their methodological adaptation or further development on a case-by-case basis. For this reason, methodological researchers complete the work of the competence field in a fourth methodological perspective. This perspective aims to adapt and further develop the statistical procedures required for these analyses based on the content-related questions of economics and social sciences and the resulting requirements for the informative value of the methodological approaches.

Joint Projects

In the EWF competence field, the relevant activities are consolidated under a joint umbrella, thus boosting their international visibility. The existing activities are coordinated and additional collaborations are generated. Accordingly, the competence field also serves as a nucleus for further joint projects. Current joint projects are:

In the competence field EWF, the initiative "RuhrMetrics" – formed by research groups in statistics and econometrics from both inside and outside the UA Ruhr – has recently been established. RuhrMetrics intensifies in particular the scientific exchange in econometric methods research. Part of this effort is the biannual RuhrMetrics research seminar, which is jointly run by the chairs of Vasyl Golosnoy (RUB), Christoph Hanck (UDE), Carsten Jentsch (TU Do) and Robinson Kruse-Becher (FU Hagen). The seminar provides a platform that promotes scientific discourse and fosters joint research projects.