The ‘saving for a rainy day’ hypothesis implies that households’ saving decisions reflect that they can (rationally) predict future income declines. The empirical relevance of this hypothesis plays a key role in discussions of fiscal policy multipliers and it holds under the null that the...

This paper investigates the statistical features and the macroeconomic determinants of youth unemployment in a number of European countries. First, it explores its short and long memory properties by estimating both autoregressive and fractional integration models. This type of analysis sheds...

The Ifo Business Climate is the most important indicator for the business cycle in Germany. In 1993 the connection between the two components of the business climate – business situation and business expectations – was graphically portrayed by Ifo in a 4-quadrant scheme: the Ifo Business...

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of different unemployment theories in three major economies, namely the UK, the US and Japan, by estimating the degree of dependence in the unemployment series. Both univariate and multivariate long memory methods are used. The results vary...

In this paper we use fractional integration techniques to examine the degree of integration of four US stock market indices, namely the Standard and Poor, Dow Jones, Nasdaq and NYSE, at a daily frequency from January 2005 till December 2009. We analyse the weekly structure of the series and...

In this paper we re-investigate the comovements of interest rates in the G7-countries. We propose a structured modus operandi to analyze the time series characteristics of interest rates and to test for common features. We conduct cointegration, serial correlation common feature and codependence...

This paper deals with the economics of Bitcoins in two ways. First, it broadens the discussion on how to capture Bitcoins using economic terms. Center stage in this analysis take the discussion of some unique characteristics of this market as well as the comparison of Bitcoins and gold. Second,...

The renewed momentum in the German housing market has led to concerns that Germany is vulnerable to asset price shocks. In this paper, we apply recently developed recursive unit root tests to detect the beginning and the end of potential speculative bubbles in Germany over the sample period...

Previous empirical research has assumed that goods trade responds to goods trade preferentialism only, while other forms of preferentialism – such as services trade or investment preferentialism – are irrelevant for goods trade. This paper provides novel evidence for the gains from a broader...

Using the new unit root test by Phillips et al. (2011) we show that the Target balances of the German Bundesbank have been exploding from the beginning of 2009 to the beginning of 2013. By implementing a full-allotment policy and reducing the required minimum quality of collaterals in October...