Editorial: Well Documented Articles Achieve More Impact

This issue offers for the first time supplementary material to articles. It consists of Excel files providing data the research is based on, calculation sheets, and optimization tools. Moreover, text files with pseudo code of algorithms and data of instances used for testing these algorithms as well as a video file with a demonstration of the use of a system in experiments are supplied for download. This material facilitates the understanding of the published articles and the replication of their findings to the benefit of scientific progress. And last but not least, such well documented articles will achieve much more impact.

Who has really paid for the Reconstruction of East Germany? Expected and Realized Returns on Real Estate Investments in East and West Germany in the 1990s

We evaluate the profitability of investments in residential property in Germany after unification with a focus on the comparison of East and West Germany. Calculations are carried out for (1) the after-tax return an investor might have expected at the beginning of the 1990s, and (2) the after-tax return that has been realized ten years after. We compare a set of statistical data for investments in fifty major cities by using complete financial budgeting. The results show that tax subsidies could not always protect investors from losing money, but they have boosted realized returns after tax considerably. Therefore, it was indeed the taxpayers, not the investors, who have borne the cost of reconstructing East Germany.