In this paper we challenge the view that the oil price has lost its influence on economic activity after the mid-1980s. While we concede that typical VAR models put forward in the literature fail to identify oil price shocks that significantly affect aggregate production, we obtain clearly...

Germany’s comparatively good economic performance throughout the Great Recession of the years 2008/2009 is often attributed to the business model of the German Mittelstand firm. Somewhat surprisingly, this claim has never been backed by empirical evidence. In this paper we use micro panel data...

Despite massive digitization efforts, the German economy has experienced a marked slowdown in its productivity growth. This paper analyzes the reasons behind this disconcerting development. A major factor is the turnaround of the labor market that commenced around 2005. The successful...