Is it possible to count the earth’s population from outer space? The answer is yes, in urban areas it is possible. However, this can only be done in an indirect manner: by identifying physical objects in the urban landscape in earth observation data and using these to estimate the number of...

The deluge of scientific research data has excited the general public, as well as the scientific community, with the possibilities for better understanding of scientific problems, from climate to culture. For data to be available, researchers must be willing and able to share them. The policies...

Am 20. Oktober 2010 wird erstmalig der Welt-Statistik-Tag gefeiert. Ins Leben gerufen von der UNO, soll damit die Wichtigkeit statistischer Daten für die Gestaltung des gesellschaftlichen Fortschritts gewürdigt werden. Statistische Zahlen erfreuen sich im Alltag einer gewissen Popularität....

The Commission’s aim was to ascertain the limits of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, and to propose more appropriate indicators. Within a short period of time, a considerable amount of work was generated and a very interesting report was...

Dieses Working Paper dokumentiert die Folien des Vortrags beim 19. wissenschaftlichen Kolloquium „Wohlfahrtsmessung – Beiträge aus Wissenschaft und amtlicher Statistik zum Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi-Report“, am 12. November 2010 in Wiesbaden.

In July 2007, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) requested that the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) develop recommendations on improving Germany’s scientific infrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Before the publication of...

In 1999 the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) appointed a commission to examine the informational infrastructure in Germany and to make proposals for its improvement. The central objective was to improve the cooperation between the scientific community and official...

In this comment on Henrich et al. (2010) I argue that the right choice of subject pool is intimately linked to the research question. At least within economics, students are often the perfect subject pool for answering some fundamental research questions. Student subject pools can provide an...

In der Wissenschaft wird – zu Recht – viel von den Daten der Volkszählung (VZ) 2010/2011 erwartet. Dem ersten Zensus seit der deutschen Wiedervereinigung. Bislang gab es keinen großen politischen Streit um diese „Totalerhebung“, die in den 80er Jahren in Westdeutschland hoch kontrovers...