IWH's founding mission was to carry out research on the economic transition in East Germany and Central and Eastern Europe.
Transition comes along with institutional changes and processes of adaption and offers both a rich source of economic questions and the possibility to apply modern scientific methods.
Structural change causes prosperity and demise of regions, industries, and firms, and the department uses microeconometric methods to empirically assess these effects.
It will achieve this objective by conducting joint research into aspects of the framework conditions for financial and labour markets that are relevant to growth and structure.
The unique attribute of the department is the analysis of interdependency between national and supranational regulation within the field of financial and labour markets on the one hand, and real sector development on the other.