Rainer Maurer is teaching economics with focus on macroeconomic economic policy at Pforzheim University since 2002.

He studied economics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn, specializing in monetary policy with Prof. Dr. Manfred J.M. Neumann. The subject of his diploma thesis was "Risk premiums in the term structure of fixed-income securities".  In October 1990 he graduated with a degree in economics.

From 1991 to 1997 he worked at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy as a research assistant in the research group "Structural Change and Employment". He received his doctorate in 1997 from Prof. Dr. Horst Siebert at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel with a thesis on "International Trade with Capital Goods and Economic Growth - Theory and Empirical Evidence". The work was published as Kiel Study No. 289.

From 1997 to 2002 was head of the real estate market research at the FERI AG in Bad Homburg.

Research activities:

Rainer Maurer comments on current topics in his blog "Volxwirtschaft".

1. Problems of the European Monetary Union

One focus of Rainer Maurer's research work in recent years has been the empirical analysis of problems in the European Monetary Union (EMU). When the EMU was founded, it was obvious that there were major structural differences between the member countries. According to the so-called "locomotive theory", however, a currency union can lead to greater economic integration through intensified trade, so that the probability of asymmetric shocks decreases over time and the economic structures of the member countries move closer to an "optimal currency area". A currency union would therefore be able to create the conditions for its own existence. According to the so-called "coronation theory", however, the structural differences must be overcome before a monetary union can be established, otherwise asymmetric shocks will be too strong to be absorbed by the fiscal policies of the member countries alone. The resulting stability costs would then jeopardize the cohesion of the monetary union in the long term.

An important indicator of the degree of economic integration of a currency union is the price level of the member countries: With free trade, the prices of tradable goods should be the same, except for the transaction costs of trade. According to the Balassa-Samuelson theorem, however, the prices of non-tradable goods (including services) should also level out in the longer term as economic integration deepens, which leads to a convergence of labor productivity. Accordingly, the degree of economic integration of a currency union can be checked on the basis of the long-term convergence of price levels. The European Commission and the European Central Bank have also taken the view in several publications that there should be a convergence process in the price levels of the member countries in the long term.

Rainer Maurer's empirical work therefore focuses on tests of the stationarity of real exchange rates and on tests of the cointegration of their components. Steady-state real exchange rates are compatible with a long-run convergence of price levels towards a constant due to transaction costs, but realistically allow for short-term stochastic deviations. A contrary result, non-stationary real exchange rates represent a necessary and sufficient condition for a long-term divergence of price levels (cf. simulation module).

As part of the research project "The Time Series Properties of the Real Exchange Rates Between the Member States of the European Monetary Union" (Maurer, 2019, Credit and Capital Markets, Volume 52, Issue 2), the stationarity of the real exchange rates of the twelve founding members was therefore examined of EMU based on the monthly values ??of the consumer price indices published by the OECD. The period under investigation covered three periods: the Bretton Woods System (1960:1 to 1972:12), the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (1973:1 to 1998:12) and the European Monetary Union (1999:1 to 2017:5). The results of various tests based on panel data and time series data generally show that real exchange rates are not stationary over all study periods and their components are not cointegrated. The founding of EMU and the associated elimination of the nominal exchange rate therefore had no discernible impact. Although there are some examples of stationary real exchange rates in all the periods under review, these always relate to different pairs of countries and therefore do not allow the identification of individual "convergence clubs".

As part of the research project "Price Levels in the European Monetary Union: Even Tradables Follow Independent Random Walks" (Maurer, 2022, Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, forthcoming, preprint here, table appendix here), the analysis for the 12 founding members of EMU was extended to the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) and 8 of its subcomponents (total goods, total services, clothing, nonalcoholic beverages, passenger cars, production machinery, communication services, restaurants and hotels) published by EUROSTAT on a monthly basis for the period 1999:1 to 2019:9.

A more detailed analysis of the time series properties of the HICPs of the individual countries shows that they all follow non-stationary random paths. The drift parameters of the random paths differ significantly. They are not grouped around a common target inflation rate. Thus, the ECB did not succeed in anchoring a uniform target inflation rate in the time series process of the HICPs during the period under review. The analysis of the time series properties of the real exchange rates results in 66 country pairs in each case, so that a total of around 16360 data points were evaluated for each of the 9 price indicators. In turn, the test results show that real exchange rates are typically nonstationary (overview table: stationarity tests) and their components are not cointegrated (overview table: cointegration tests). Surprisingly, this is also true for the price indexes of tradable goods (clothing, nonalcoholic beverages, passenger cars, production machinery). Exceptions for certain "convergence clubs" of countries are not found either. One explanation for this result could be monopolistic price discrimination and/or local distribution costs for tradable goods. There is certainly a need for further research here.

Based on these results, the following economic policy measures could be taken to reduce price level divergences: (1) Intensification of European competition policy with the aim of further reducing national barriers to market entry in order to deepen market integration. (2) Better coordination of national fiscal policies with the goal of price level convergence. (3) Country-specific differentiation of monetary policy instruments, such as minimum reserve requirements for commercial banks or the introduction of country-specific main refinancing rates. All of these economic policy measures can have undesirable side effects that lead to conflicting objectives. Therefore, such decisions cannot be made by the scientific community, but are left to the political decision-makers.

2. Agricultural policy and biodiversity

Another of Rainer Maurer's research projects dealt with the effects of agricultural policy extensification measures on biodiversity. For example, the current EU agricultural reform 2023-2027 aims at reducing the use of more hazardous pesticides by 50% (target 6), a minimum share of 25% of agricultural land for organic farming by 2030 (target 8), and a reduction of fertilizer use by at least 20% (target 13). While on the one hand it is empirically demonstrable that such extensification measures increase biodiversity on the respective cropland compared to before, on the other hand it is also an empirical fact that the production yield normally decreases due to extensification measures. This raises the question of how strong the biodiversity effect of an alternative measure would be, which would consist in reducing the production area on the intensively (conventionally) farmed areas to such an extent that it corresponds to the reduction in yield with an extensification measure. The areas freed up in this way could then be combined and renatured (renaturation measure), so that an even higher level of biodiversity could be created on these areas than on extensively farmed areas. This raises the question of which of the two action alternatives with the same yield leads to a higher biodiversity on balance?

Five empirical indicators are needed to answer this question: A measure of land productivity before and after the introduction of the extensification measure, a measure of biodiversity before and after the introduction of the extensification measure, and a measure of biodiversity in the wild. This information can then be used to calculate which alternative action results in greater biodiversity (Maurer, 2022, Is organic or conventional farming better for biodiversity?, Wirtschaftsdienst 102, 303-309). As can be shown, it is possible to answer the question in three different ways that are mathematically identical: One can compare the level of total biodiversity that is increased in the extensification measure with the level of total biodiversity in the renaturation measure (derivation 1). One can compare the increase of biodiversity in the extensification measure with the increase of total biodiversity in the renaturation measure (derivation 2). One can relate the ratio of the biodiversity gap on the intensively managed land to the biodiversity gap on the extensively managed land and compare it to the ratio of land productivity on the intensively managed land to the land productivity on the extensively managed land (last line in both derivation 1 and derivation 2). The following graph illustrates the relationship by comparing the increase in biodiversity in a transition to organic farming (left side) with the increase in total biodiversity in a reduction of conventional farming at the same yield (right side) based on the data of Table 4 in Maurer (2022):

3. Higher Education Policy: The Logical Contradiction between a Political Commitment of University Management Bodies and the Fundamental Right to Academic Freedom

Another focus of Rainer Maurer's research is higher education policy. Not so long ago, it was taken for granted that state universities would be guided by the principle of ideological neutrality. At the institutional level, the principles of the so-called "Beutelsbach Consensus" also applied to higher education: The prohibition of indoctrination, the principle of controversy, and individual orientation.

For about 10 years, this self-understanding has been increasingly eroding. In March 2008, Pforzheim University signed the so-called "Principles of Responsible Management Education" (PRME Code), which obligate the university to "incorporate" economic and corporate policy objectives represented in the UN Global Compact into the academic activities and curricula of universities ("We will incorporate into our academic activities and curricula the values of global social responsibility as portrayed in international initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact." (PRME, Principle 2)). The UN Global Compact obligates companies that sign it, for example, to implement environmental and social standards that go beyond legal obligations.

Of course, it is compatible with the fundamental right to academic freedom (although not necessary) if individual scientists wish to represent such economic and corporate policy objectives. However, no scientist may be put under pressure, either directly or indirectly, by university management bodies to represent such political positions. This is because such positions are always controversial in academic debates. For one thing, the weighting of goals for action is a normative problem. However, normative problems cannot be clarified in a generally binding way, according to a widespread view (Maurer, Rainer (2016), Unternehmerische Verantwortung für nachhaltige Entwicklung - eine sinnvolle Forderung?, Journal for Markets and Ethics, 4 (1)). On the other hand, it is disputable from an economic perspective based on standard theories as well as on recent results of experimental research (Maurer 2017, Can CSR-based Self-regulation be a Substitute for Legal Regulation? Conclusions from Public Goods Experiments, Journal of Self-Regulation and Regulation, Vol. 3) whether companies have scope under market conditions to pursue environmental or social policy beyond legal obligations at the expense of other objectives. From a legal point of view, it is also debatable whether the management of a company is actually allowed to do anything other than primarily represent the interests of the company owners (§255 StGB Veruntreuung). As is usual in academia, there is an open discourse on all these questions on the part of the various researchers. The university as an institution is not called upon to participate in this discourse and take sides for a particular scientific positioning. Rather, the university has to establish the institutional foundations for free research and teaching and thus also for free scientific discourse.

By fixing the university to certain economic and corporate policy objectives, the open discourse on alternative economic and corporate policy objectives at the university is significantly impaired, because the university management has a wealth of latent sanction possibilities within the scope of its decision-making powers. However, a free discourse of alternative opinions is necessary for both research and teaching. Individual researchers depend on the open, uninfluenced feedback of their colleagues in their work. Likewise, the instructor depends on students being able to freely discuss the differing doctrinal opinions given in the disciplinary literature without fear of possible sanctions. However, this is no longer the case, especially in the case of written homework or final papers, if the university as an institution has publicly declared its support for certain economic and corporate policy objectives.

The explicit obligation of the university to "incorporate" the economic and business policy objectives of the PRME Code into the activities and curricula of higher education institutions (PRME, Principle 2) is in logical contradiction to the obligation of the university to guarantee the freedom of teaching and research of individual professors, which emanates from Article 5 (3) of the Basic Law. In practice, this logical contradiction means that the university can never fulfill both obligations at the same time.

Rainer Maurer has therefore spoken out early on against this attempt to misuse university institutions to spread political ideologies. Thus, in the Pforzheim contribution "Beyond Ideological Neutrality: The Political Mission Statement of Pforzheim University, Maurer (2015)", he pointed out that students are mature citizens who have the right to express their own political opinions and must not be pressured to participate as a vicarious agent of political programs, for example, "in the great transformation to sustainable development" (Kurz, 2014, p. 129, PRME - global context and regional implementation). After the publication of his Pforzheim contribution, Rainer Maurer received approving feedback from a number of colleagues with the common tenor that there is at least a need for discussion with regard to the university's ideological engagement. In four cases, this feedback is also available as e-mails. The Pforzheimer Zeitung took up the topic and published the article "Streit um Leitbild an der Hochschule". In this article, the rector of the university, Ulrich Jautz, then claimed, with regard to the position represented by Rainer Maurer, "The colleague is completely isolated - even in his own department." Actually, the Pforzheimer Zeitung should have asked at this point how Mr. Jautz came to this assessment. In any case, there had not been a survey among the university's lecturers. Mr. Jautz could not know therefore with security whether its statement is correct. Obviously, he knowingly accepted that his assessment might be wrong. The e-mails available to Rainer Maurer show that the latter is indeed the case. It is obvious that this reaction of the rector of Pforzheim University makes an open discussion of the university's ideological commitment considerably more difficult. The incident can thus be interpreted as empirical evidence that university administrations that abandon the principle of ideological neutrality find it difficult to create framework conditions under which a free scientific discourse of controversial topics is still possible.

How difficult an open exchange of arguments at the university has become in the meantime was also shown on the occasion of the symposium "Teaching-Transfer-Innovation: The Role of the University in Society", which took place at Pforzheim University on January 16, 2019. There, at the end of a presentation by Rainer Maurer on "Is a restructuring of the science system necessary in view of so-called "grand societal challenges"?", colleague Jürgen Volkert claimed that there is a general consensus in economics to maximize "utilitarian welfare functions" in economic policy decisions. This was intended to invalidate Maurer's plea against instrumentalizing the university system in favor of particular political worldviews. After Maurer publicly rejected this with reference to well-known textbook literature, Jürgen Volkert then published his position in an e-mail (link).

In Maurer's reply (link), which was planned for the series "Pforzheimer Beiträge," had criticized this replica mainly on two points:

1.   Against the background of the history of welfare economics, Jürgen Volkert's statement that there is a general consensus in economics to maximize utilitarian welfare functions in economic policy decisions and that "utilitarianism remains in any case, contrary to Rainer Maurer's assumption, a central ethical foundation of economics" simply contradicts the facts. As can be seen from any relevant textbook on welfare economics (e.g., Boadway and Bruce (1991)) and especially from the “Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare”, the declared intention of many economists since the late 1930s at the latest has been to free themselves from the narrow normative conceptions of utilitarianism. Many of these new approaches pursued the explicit goal of separating the description of states on the basis of descriptive theories from the valuation of these states by different normative value systems in the form of social welfare functions. Table 1 of Maurer's paper (linkage) provides an overview of the history of this development. Thus, the claim that "utilitarian maximization of total utility (happiness, satisfaction) is a foundation of economics" is factually incorrect. It discredits the efforts of several generations of economists to keep welfare economics open to a separation of economic description of states of affairs and their normative evaluation by different ethical worldviews. Moreover, Jürgen Volkert of course gets entangled in a logical contradiction when he writes in the entrance of his replica that "utilitarian maximization of total utility (happiness, satisfaction) is a foundation of economics" and points out at the end of his replica that Amartya Sen's (2009) "capability approach" has been "operationalized by the German Council of Economic Experts (2011) as a conception of human well-being for Germany", because the "capability approach" differs substantially from "utilitarianism". "Utilitarianism" evaluates the concrete results of actions, whereas the "capability approach", in deliberate distinction to this, evaluates the freedom margins that are made possible by actions. If "utilitarianism is in any case, contrary to Rainer Maurer's assumption, a central ethical basis of economics", then the question arises why the German Council of Economic Experts, in a joint report with the French Conseil d'Analyse Économique, does not use utilitarianism but Amartya Sen's "capability approach" to construct a system of welfare indicators?

2.   In his replica Jürgen Volkert writes Max Weber "A science completely free of values and attitudes is not conceivable. Accordingly, Weber (1904: p. 33) emphasizes: "A lack of personal values and scientific objectivity have no inner relationship whatsoever"." However, if one places this Max Weber quote its overall context, it becomes clear that Max Weber's text does not provide a basis for the conclusion "A science completely free of values and sentiments is not conceivable." Thus it says at the said place: "The constant mixing of scientific discussion of facts and subjective raisonsonnements is one of the still most widespread, but also most harmful peculiarities of works of our discipline. It is against this mixture, not against the advocacy of one's own ideals, that the above remarks are directed. Mindlessness and scientific "objectivity" have no inner affinity whatsoever (Weber (1904a, p. 157). The sentence "A lack of personal values and scientific "objectivity" have no inner kinship whatsoever" thus refers to the probably hardly disputable fact that scientists, like most people, have a personal value system, in Max Weber's language "own ideals" or an own "values". Nonetheless, in the sentence before, Max Weber argues against a "mixing of scientific discussion of facts and subjective raisonsonnements" - that is, against a mixing of descriptive (or positive) analysis of facts and the evaluation of those facts by one's personal value system. He even calls this "mixing" one of the "most harmful peculiarities of works in our discipline." Such a sense-distorting quotation weighs all the more heavily because the Guidelines of the Faculty of Economics and Law for the Preparation of Written Papers at Pforzheim University explicitly state on page 16: "Sense-distorting or one-sided citations of the text in a source are serious scientific errors".

Distorting citations, failure to take into account an important part of the literature and a blatant logical contradiction in the argumentation naturally raise the question of whether the principles of good scientific practice have been observed here. If one takes the "Guidelines for Ensuring Good Scientific Practice" of the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a basis, doubts may arise. After all, under Guideline 9 (p. 15) it states: "Research design: "Scientists take full account of and acknowledge the current state of research when planning a project." Thus, technical literature would have to be fully considered. Under Guideline 12 (pp. 17-18), the explanation states, "An important basis for enabling replication is to (...) ensure the traceability of citations." Thus, a citation that distorts meaning would also violate Guideline 12. A direct prohibition of logical contradictions is not found in the DFG guidelines. However, Guideline 11 (p. 17) states: "To answer research questions, scientists and scholars apply scientifically sound and comprehensible methods". Since any statement x can be inferred from a logical contradiction (p ^ ¬p) ((p ^ ¬p) => (p ^ ¬p v x) => x), a logical contradiction could thus well be taken to violate Guideline 11.

Whatever answer one arrives at when assessing whether the principles of good scientific practice have been observed, an open discussion of the problems raised should be possible with direct reference to the text. Unfortunately, however, the editorial board of the "Pforzheimer Beiträge" considered this to be a violation of Jürgen Volkert's "personal rights". The original reply (link) therefore had to be rewritten in such a way that the name and the replica of Jürgen Volkert no longer appear in it. It is of course difficult to discuss the content of a text if one is not allowed to quote from the text. Rainer Maurer tried it anyway with the Pforzheim contribution No. 173 (link). However, Rainer Maurer believes that science would lose the ability to correct errors if this procedure imposed on him were made the general rule.