Standard transaction cost arguments can only partially explain why the share of cash transactions is still high in many countries. This paper shows that consumers’ desire to monitor liquidity is one of the reasons. Consumers make use of a distinctive feature of cash – a glance into one’s...

Germans are still very fond of using cash. Of all direct payment transactions, cash accounts for an astounding 82% in terms of number, and for 58% in terms of value. With a new and unique dataset that combines transaction information with survey data on payment behaviour of German consumers, we...

In several studies, hedonic methods have been used successfully for the ex post assessment of the accuracy of inflation measurement. Most of those studies relate to high-tech products, with respect to which traditional methods of compiling price indices often fail. We apply hedonic methods to...

In this paper we analyse whether the recording behaviour of consumers keeping a payment diary changes over the diary period. Using data from a large study on the payment behaviour of German consumers we find that individuals tend to report a higher number of transactions on the first day of the...

Even though second generation immigrants make up ever increasing population shares in industrialized countries we know little about their social integration and wellbeing. This study focuses on the educational attainment of German born children of immigrants. Their schooling success still lags...

The speed at which immigrants assimilate is the subject of debate. Human capital formation plays a major role in this discussion. This paper compares the educational attainment of second generation immigrants to those of natives in the same age cohort. Evidence using a large German data set...

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 is the first attempt to investigate the performance of different learning rules in fitting survey data of household and expert inflation expectations in five core European economies (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Spain). Overall it is found that constant gain learning...