In the past decade, Germany has been the world champion in exporting capital ("Exportweltmeister"). No other country invested larger amounts of savings outside its borders. However, we find that Germany plays in the third division when it comes to investment performance. To show this, we...

This paper shows that China has launched a new global system for cross-border rescue lending to countries in debt distress. We build the first comprehensive dataset on China's overseas bailouts between 2000 and 2021 and provide new insights into China's growing role in the global financial...

Developing countries are constrained in financing current account deficits as real capital mobility is still far from perfect. At the same time, capital flows to these countries proved to be extremely volatile. The paper argues that the long-term problem of "too little" should not be confused...

Compared with China's dominance in world trade, its expanding role in global finance is poorly documented and understood. Over the past decades, China has exported record amounts of capital to the rest of the world. Many of these financial flows are not reported to the IMF, the BIS or the World...

China's lending boom to developing countries is morphing into defaults and debt distress. Given the secrecy surrounding China's loans, also the associated defaults remain 'hidden', as missed payments and restructuring details are not disclosed. We construct an encompassing dataset of sovereign...

U.S. equity outperformance and sustained dollar appreciation have led to large valuation gains for the rest of the world on the U.S. external position. I construct their global distribution, carefully accounting for the role of tax havens. Valuation gains are concentrated and large in developed...

The paper investigates by means of cointegration analysis whether the recently observed low levels of private saving and the current account balance in the United States are worrisome in the sense that they cannot be sufficiently explained by determinants which performed well in the past. Stock...

Fifteen years after German reunification, the facts about slow regional convergence have born out the prediction of Barro (1991), except that migration out of East Germany has not slowed down. I document that in particular the 18-29 year old are leaving East Germany, and that the emigration has...

Hours per capita measures based on the private sector as usually included in the set of observables for estimating macroeconomic models are affected by low-frequent demographic trends and sectoral shifts that cannot be explained by standard models. Further, model-based output gap estimates are...

The paper compares the pay-as-you-go system and a capital funded system of old age insurance. The capital funded system has a higher rate of return. Pension income can be obtained at lower costs for the individual. This implies efficiency gains in terms of higher savings and reduced distortion...