Summary The paper presents a new and comprehensive data set of all bonds issued by the sixteen German federal states (Länder) since 1992. It thus provides a complete picture of a capital market comparable in size to the combined corporate bond and commercial paper market in Germany. The...

We study the determinants of euro area sovereign bond spreads since the introduction of the euro. An aggregate risk factor is a main driver of spreads, both directly and indirectly by interacting with the size and structure of national banking sectors. When aggregate risk increases, countries...

We analyze contributions of different markets, related by an approximate arbitrage relationship, to price discovery on traded inflation expectations and how it changed during the financial crisis. We use a new high-frequency data-set on inflation-indexed and nominal government bonds as well as...

Summary We investigate the effects of fiscal policy shocks on the German economy extending the SVAR approach of Blanchard and Perotti (2002). Direct government expenditure shocks are found to increase output and private consumption on impact. The output multiplier is smaller than one and is...

Abstract Using national account data, we define corporate balance sheet adjustment episodes as periods during which major increases in non-financial corporations’ net lending/ borrowing are experienced. An analysis of such episodes in Germany and Japan, and a more systematic exploration of a...