An economy's ability to resist adverse shocks, such as an economic recession or natural disaster, is associated with its financial system structure due to different countercyclical funding capabilities. This paper uses a novel database of bank headquarter locations in a cross-country comparison...

"Closing borders is naive, the virus will come regardless" - this was the policy assumption that was repeatedly stated until mid-March by the WHO, the EU, as well as responsible authorities in Germany and other countries. Meanwhile, other states had started closing their borders to travellers...

In this paper we analyze how consumers in Germany updated expectations about inƒaflation in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. We use a fixed effects model to estimate the effect of regional exposure to COVID-19 cases, the stringency of restriction measures and local unemployment rates on...

Using the exact wording of the ECB's definition of price-stability, we started a representative online survey of German citizens in January 2019 that is designed to measure long-term inflation expectations and the credibility of the inflation target. Our results indicate that credibility has...

Using the exogenous shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, we study how informed market participants evaluate fiscal space. Short-selling activity shifted upon the onset of the pandemic towards companies with low financial flexibility only in countries with limited fiscal space. Among these companies,...

This paper examines the effect of national government response measures to Covid-19 on German international capital flows. Analyzing highly disaggregated monthly data from the German balance of payments statistics over the period from January 2019 through January 2021, we find that bilateral...

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to enormous data movements that strongly affect parameters and forecasts from standard VARs. To address these issues, we propose VAR models with outlier-augmented stochastic volatility (SV) that combine transitory and persistent changes in volatility. The resulting...