The components of BERA include the coordinated recruitment of academic staff, joint research activities, a mentoring program, workshops, exchange research visits, and targeted offers for women scholars. According to Marcel Fratzscher, the president of DIW Berlin, "The BERA program will make a very important contribution toward advancing the careers of national and international young scholars and scientists. A particular concern of all those involved is to support economists and to make it easier for local researchers to establish a network starting in Berlin with national and international researchers."

The program partners are the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), Freie Universität Berlin, the European School for Management and Technology (ESMT), the Hertie School of Governance, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and the Berlin Social Science Centre (WZB). The BERA program will officially be launched on April 1, 2016. The program and the director, Georg Weizsäcker, a professor at Humboldt-Universität and Research Director at DIW Berlin, were recently presented at a kick-off event. Georg Weizsäcker says, “Academia needs to find, to support, and to keep talented junior scholars. The Berlin location is not only attractive for economists from Germany, but also for international researchers. Financial support alone is not sufficient. The work environment and the research network both play a major role. The BERA program will link these components.”