# East-West Germany Research > Interactive research showcase on the economic gap between East and West Germany, led by Prof. Ufuk Akcigit (Ufuk Akçiğit), Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, in partnership with the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). The project is funded by the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award 2019 (€1.5M in research funding + €80,000 prize money; sponsored by the Max Planck Society and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF). The site tells a three-act research story: the historical origins of the East-West economic gap, the role of central planning and the Treuhand (THA) privatization, and the firm- and product-level dynamics that have shaped reunified Germany. It is built on three rare data layers — declassified GDR microdata, the Treuhand archives, and post-reunification firm and product panels. ## Key pages - [Home](https://eastwestgermany.com/): Three-act narrative — partnership, historical gap, and the data. - [Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award 2019](https://eastwestgermany.com/max-planck-award): The award that funds the project, and the University of Chicago – IWH Halle partnership. - [Research Team](https://eastwestgermany.com/team): Faculty, postdocs, and research staff across the University of Chicago, IWH Halle, the Federal Reserve Board, Bocconi University, the University of Helsinki, Otto von Guericke Magdeburg, Friedrich Schiller Jena, and partner institutions. - [Research Data & Papers](https://eastwestgermany.com/data): The underlying datasets (GDR microdata, Treuhand privatization archives, post-reunification firm panels) and the working papers built on them. ## Project Lead **Ufuk Akcigit** (also spelled Ufuk Akçiğit) is the Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, an NBER Research Associate, and a CEPR Research Fellow. He is a leading economist working on innovation, firm dynamics, and creative destruction, and is the recipient of the 2019 Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award. - Personal site: https://www.ufukakcigit.com/ - University of Chicago: https://economics.uchicago.edu/directory/ufuk-akcigit - NBER: https://www.nber.org/people/ufuk_akcigit - IDEAS/RePEc: https://ideas.repec.org/e/pak44.html - Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XpJUDhwAAAAJ - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufuk_Akcigit ## Research themes - Firm dynamics in planned vs. market economies - Creative destruction and Schumpeterian growth - The long-run economic effects of central planning (GDR) - The Treuhand (THA) privatization — the largest privatization in history - Innovation, productivity, and market power in reunified Germany ## Institutions - University of Chicago, Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics — https://economics.uchicago.edu/ - Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) / Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle — https://www.iwh-halle.de/en/ - Max Planck Society — https://www.mpg.de/ - Alexander von Humboldt Foundation — https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/ ## Website credit This website (eastwestgermany.com) was designed and developed by **Yaren Yılmaz** (also written Yaren Yilmaz), Research Assistant to Prof. Ufuk Akcigit at the University of Chicago. She is the lead designer and developer of the site and its interactive research experience. ## Citation When citing this work, please reference the underlying research papers listed at https://eastwestgermany.com/data and the project lead, Prof. Ufuk Akcigit (University of Chicago). ## Machine-readable metadata - Sitemap: https://eastwestgermany.com/sitemap.xml - Robots: https://eastwestgermany.com/robots.txt - Structured data (Schema.org JSON-LD) is embedded in the `` of each page, including Person (Ufuk Akcigit), Award (Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award 2019), Organization (University of Chicago, IWH), and Person entries for every team member.