Policy Briefing

Policy Briefing · 27. October 2020

In 2015 the German Bundestag was attack - most certainly by a Russian hacking group. A combination of social engineering and trojan malware opened the door and allowed attackers to extract official documents of members of parliament, their parliamentary groups as well as the parliament’s administration. All of this, unrecognized – possibly over weeks. This article shows why the pain is not not gone and likely to return.

Policy Briefing · 04. December 2018

The German government provides subsidies to foster investments in broadband infrastructure – a key element in reaping economic and social benefits of digitalisation. This paper finds that the subsidies rely on flawed assumptions about the motivation and behaviour of subsidy-receiving telecom companies (free-riding fear, low demand, red tape) and suffers from ill-designed targets in its execution (time gaming, cream skim-ming administrative rivalry). Finally, it proposes policy recommendation.

Policy Briefing · 21. November 2018

This paper discusses the introduction of the UBI in the Russian Federation by shortly presenting its theoretical approaches and the need for poverty reduction in the country. The paper argues that political feasibility for UBI is low as increasing taxes (required to finance the additional public spending) will be vetoed by politically and economically highly influential oligarchs that regard their wealth to be at risk from new taxation.

Policy Briefing · 08. November 2018

This policy briefing analyses the applicability of performance results and targets (PRT) in four policy areas of the Russian Federation (poverty reduction, safety, education, health,). Even when meeting their pre-conditions, successful application of PRT in the Russian administrative tasks is rare (access to health care, partially poverty reduction measures). Difficulties to design a PRT system, misguided incentives, and the weak structure of Russian administration hamper potentials.