This paper compares different ways to estimate the current state of the economy using factor models that can handle unbalanced datasets. Due to the different release lags of business cycle indicators, data unbalancedness often emerges at the end of multivariate samples, which is sometimes...

Results from portfolio models for credit risk tell us that loan concentration in certain industry sectors can substantially increase the value-at-risk (VaR). The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether a tractable infection modelʺ can provide a meaningful estimate of the impact of...

A number of recent studies and evidence for the existence of a persistent performance gap between multinational enterprises (MNE) and their domestic competitors. Therefore, the question arises whether successful firms become MNEs or whether going abroad improves home market performance. This...

This paper tests some of the predictions of recent advances in trade theory that have focused on different trade patterns of firms within the same sector. Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (2005) develop a model in which innate productivity differences between firms determine the degree of...

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...

The question as to whether changes in the external environment may have caused the importance of key determinants of German exports to shift since the 1990s is addressed by estimating Germany’s exports to EMU partner countries (intra exports) and to countries outside the euro area (extra...

The coordination channel has been proposed as a means by which foreign exchange market intervention may be effective, in addition to the traditional portfolio balance and signaling channels. If strong and persistent misalignments of the exchange rate are caused by non-fundamental influences,...

The paper analyses the recent supply side developments in France, Germany, and Italy by employing a non-parametric approach to estimate potential GDP. The analysis reveals marked heterogeneity among the three countries with regard to the contribution made by labour input. Where similarities can...

We report results on the ex ante predictability of monthly excess stock returns in Germany using real-time and revised macroeconomic data. Our real-time macroeconomic data cover the period 1994-2005. We report three results. 1) Real-time macroeconomic data did not contribute much to ex ante...

In recent macroeconomic theory, relative price variability (RPV) generates the central distortions of inflation. This paper provides first evidence on the empirical relation between inflation and RPV in the euro area focusing on threshold effects of inflation. We find that expected inflation...