Summary The paper presents a new and comprehensive data set of all bonds issued by the sixteen German federal states (Länder) since 1992. It thus provides a complete picture of a capital market comparable in size to the combined corporate bond and commercial paper market in Germany. The...

Summary We investigate the effects of fiscal policy shocks on the German economy extending the SVAR approach of Blanchard and Perotti (2002). Direct government expenditure shocks are found to increase output and private consumption on impact. The output multiplier is smaller than one and is...