The presence of other firms in a foreign market can have a double-edged effect on the profitability of new entrants. Firstly, a larger presence of other firms implies more competition and thus lowers the earnings prospects of new entrants. Secondly, there might be positive spill-over effects...

Using aggregate data, the paper analyzes the importance of inventory investment for German business cycles since 1960. In contrast to U.S. experience, the traditional productionsmoothing/ buffer-stock model is not rejected by empirical evidence. Preliminary national accounts data of inventory...

Inventory fluctuations are an important phenomenon in business cycles. However, the preliminary data on inventory investment as published in the German national accounts are tremendously prone to revision and therefore ill-equipped to diagnose the current stance of the inventory cycle. The Ifo...

This paper investigates the transmission of US macroeconomic shocks to Germany by employing a large-dimensional structural dynamic factor model. This framework allows us to investigate many transmission channels simultaneously, including 'new' channels like stock markets, foreign direct...

Globalization has effected business cycle developments in OECD countries and has increased activities of firms across national borders. This paper analyzes whether these two developments are linked. We use a new firm-level dataset on the foreign activities of German firms to test whether foreign...

In this paper we estimate a simple New-Keynesian DSGE model with German data for the sample period 1970:q1 to 1998:q4. Contrary to a number of recent similar papers estimated with US and euro-area data, we find that real money balances contribute significantly to the determination of inflation...

The paper presents empirical work on short-run and long-run comovement between the German, French and Italian aggregates of private consumption, business investment, exports, imports, GDP, and changes in inventories. In country-specific data sets, cointegration analyses are carried out both to...

In this paper, we present a disaggregated framework for the analysis of past and projected structural developments in the most relevant revenue and expenditure categories and the fiscal balance. The framework, in particular, distinguishes between the effects of discretionary fiscal policy and of...

This paper analyzes how bank lending to the private nonbank sector responds dynamically to aggregate supply, demand and monetary policy shocks in Germany and the euro area. The results suggest that the dynamic responses in the two areas are broadly similar, although there are some differences in...

Does more FDI make the world a riskier place for workers? We analyze whether an increase in multinational firms' activities is associated with an increase in firm-level employment volatility. We use a firm-level dataset for Germany which allows us to distinguish between purely domestic firms,...