External refereed essays

Do Wealthier Households Save More? The Impact of the Demographic Factor

This paper investigates the relationship between wealth, ageing and saving behaviour of private households by using pooled cross sections of German consumption survey data. Different components of wealth are distinguished, as their impact on the savings rate is not homogeneous. On average, the effect attributed to real estate dominates the other components of wealth. In addition, the savings rate strongly ...

Does the Economic Integration of China Affect Growth and Inflation in Industrial Countries?

The Chinese economic development affects GDP growth and inflation in the advanced countries. The size of the effects is inferred from multivariate time series and structural econometric methods. In particular, the GVAR and the NiGEM are employed to examine the interdependencies between the business cycles in China and industrial countries, including the US, the euro area and Japan. Evidence is based ...

Dispersed Communication by Central Bank Committees and the Predictability of Monetary Policy Decisions

The paper asks whether members of central bank decision-making committees should communicate with the public in a collegial manner, by conveying the consensus or majority view of the committee, or in an individualistic way, by providing the diversity of views among the committee members. It finds that more active as well as more consistent communication by committee members improves the predictability ...

The Pricing of Sovereign Risk and Contagion during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

The paper analyses the drivers of sovereign risk for 31 advanced and emerging economies during the European sovereign debt crisis. It shows that a deterioration in countries' fundamentals and fundamentals contagion - a sharp rise in the sensitivity of financial markets to fundamentals - are the main explanations for the rise in sovereign yield spreads and CDS spreads during the crisis, not only for ...

The Perfect Finance Minister: Whom to Appoint as Finance Minister to Balance the Budget

The role and influence of the finance minister within the cabinet are discussed with increasing prominence in the theoretical literature on the political economy of budget deficits. It is generally assumed that the spending ministers can enhance their reputation purely with new or more extensive expenditure programs, whereas it is the sole interest of the finance minister to balance the budget. Using ...

Money Demand and the Role of Monetary Indicators in Forecasting Euro Area Inflation

This paper examines the stability of money demand and the forecasting performances of a broad monetary aggregate (M3), excess liquidity and excess inflation in predicting euro area inflation. The out-of sample forecasting performances are compared to a widely used alternative, the spread of interest rates. The results indicate that the evolution of M3 is still in line with money demand, even when observations ...

A Post-2020 EU Energy Technology Policy: Revisiting the Strategic Energy Technology Plan

With the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan (SET Plan) expiring in 2020, the EU needs to revisit its energy technology policy for the post-2020 horizon and to establish a policy framework that fosters the achievement of ambitious EU commitments for decarbonization by 2050. We discuss options for a post-2020 EU energy technology policy, taking account of uncertain technology developments, uncertain ...

The Macroeconomic Determinants of Private Equity Investment: A European Comparison

A strong private equity (PE) market is a cornerstone for commercialization and innovation in modern economies. However, substantial differences exist in the relative amounts raised and invested in PE across European countries. We investigate the macroeconomic determinants of PE investment in Europe, focusing on the comparison between Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Western European countries. ...

The Cyclicality of Automatic and Discretionary Fiscal Policy: What Can Real-Time Data Tell Us?

This paper develops a new methodology for estimating both the automatic and discretionary components of fiscal policy in one reaction function using the differences between real-time and ex post data. Discretionary policy should respond to information available to the policy maker at the time (real-time data), whereas automatic fiscal policy should respond to the true state of the economy at the time ...

Paneldaten in der Soziologie: Fixed Effects Paradigma und empirische Praxis in Panelregression und Ereignisanalyse

In der soziologischen Methodenforschung werden Paneldaten als Instrument diskutiert, welches eine fundiertere Überprüfung einer kausalen Hypothese als Querschnittsdaten ermöglicht. Zur Realisierung dieses Potenzials ist allerdings die Isolierung intraindividueller Zusammenhänge im Rahmen der Schätzprozedur notwendig. Bei multivariaten Regressionsanalysen leistet dies die Fixed Effects Regression, welche ...

Italy's Fiscal Crisis

Italy is presently one of the most vulnerable economies in the eurozone. Over the past twenty years it has failed to adapt to increasing global competition and its public finances have deteriorated dramatically. Even with huge fiscal support from the other members of the eurozone, Italy’s perspectives look rather bleak. How did this situation come about? Did Italy’s EMU membership make things wors ...

Terrorism Risk Concern in Europe

Motivated by the Bayesian framework, we explore terrorism risk perception differences across European countries. Perception variation is explained by the long-term terrorism countries face, while the cyclical part of terrorism does not seem to play any role.

Trends in Economic Research: An International Perspective

Given the recent efforts in several countries to reorganize the research institutional setting to improve research productivity, our analysis addresses the following questions: To which extent has the recent awareness over international quality standards in economics around the world been reflected in research performance? How have individual countries fared? Do research quantity and quality indicators ...

A Structural Approach to Estimating the Effect of Taxation on the Labour Market Dynamics of Older Workers

We estimate a dynamic structural life-cycle model of employment, non-employment and retirement that includes endogenous accumulation of human capital and intertemporal non-separabilities in preferences. In addition, the model accounts for the effects of income tax, social security contributions and the transfer system on work incentives. The structural parameter estimates are used to evaluate the employment ...

Existenzgründungsförderung in Deutschland: Zwischenergebnisse aus der Hartz-Evaluation

Fiscal Policy Rules for Stabilisation and Growth: A Simulation Analysis of Deficit and Expenditure Targets in a Monetary Union

We analyse the effectiveness of fiscal policy rules for business cycle stabilisation in a monetary union using a quarterly macro-econometric model of Germany. The simulations compare a deficit target and an expenditure target under a range of supply, demand and fiscal shocks. Their effects are evaluated by their impact on prices and output. The analysis demonstrates that in general the deficit target ...

Die Dauer von Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland und Großbritannien: ein internationaler Vergleich (1990-1995)

Maternal Labor Market Return and Domestic Work after Childbirth in Britain and Germany

This study investigates how the duration of maternal labor market interruptions and mothers' employment status after return relate to the division of domestic work in couples after childbirth in West Germany, East Germany, and Britain. It extends the literature by considering how these two aspects of postnatal labor market return decisions of mothers may give rise to or counteract growing gender inequality ...

A Description of the Operative Decision-Making Process of a Power Generating Company on the Nordic Electricity Market

In a liberalised electricity market, power generating companies face various trading possibilities. In addition, they have to take scheduling decisions. Both kinds of decisions are affected by uncertainties, e.g. power plant outages, uncertain market prices for electricity or imperfect wind power forecasts. This paper presents an overview of the decision-making process of a power generating company ...

Temporary Agency Work and Firm Competitiveness: Evidence from German Manufacturing Firms

This paper addresses the relationship between the utilization of temporary agency workers by firms and their competitiveness measured by unit labor costs, using a rich, newly built, dataset of German manufacturing enterprises. We conduct the analysis by applying different panel data models while taking the inherent selection problem into account. Making use of dynamic panel data models allows us to ...