The legal regulations require the minimum wage in Germany to be adjusted biennially which gives rise to a policy discontinuity. From the perspective of rational expectations models, such policy features render standard local approximation techniques infeasible. The paper presents a stylised...

From an economic perspective, imposing a credible one-off net wealth levy in crisis times as a tool to ward off a national emergency appears to be advantageous as, in an ideal world, this would not distort market players’ allocation decisions. However, in practice, charging such a levy may...

We study whether a central bank should deviate from its objective of price stability to promote financial stability. We tackle this question within a textbook New Keynesian model augmented with capital accumulation and microfounded endogenous financial crises. We compare several interest rate...

We use a New Keynesian DSGE model with a rental housing market to evaluate how financing a labor tax wedge reduction through higher property taxation affects the real economy and welfare. We find that a labor tax wedge reduction generates favorable macroeconomic effects and improves...

The paper investigates the impact the provision of public capital has on the demand for private capital and labour using a cost function with public capital included as a fixed unpaid factor of production. Special attention is paid to the examination of the influence tax vs. debt financing of...

This paper examines whether the productivity growth in the West-German states is influenced by the provision of public infrastructure. Medium-term labour productivity growth and output growth varies a lot between German states. This differences are more pronounced during the eighties. The...

The present paper presents an analysis of the impact of public infrastructure capital on regional economic developments in Germany. After presenting some descriptive statistical data on the economies of the 11 regions in (West) Germany a simple theoretical model of a cost-minimizing firm is...

We use a New Keynesian DSGE model with search frictions on the housing market to evaluate how financing a labor tax reduction by higher property taxation affects the real economy and welfare. Search on the housing market enables us to explicitly model stocks and flows, which is necessary to...

We estimate indicators of aggregate demand and supply conditions based on a structural factor model using a large number of inflation and real activity measures for the United States. We identify demand and supply factors by imposing theoretically motivated sign restrictions on factor loadings....