Germany is economically closely intertwined with the other member countries of the euro area. Some of these countries are in a deep recession, and it is feared that Germany will not manage to avoid being swept up by this economic burden for long. However, the German economy also benefits from...

Has heightened uncertainty been a major contributor to the Great Recession and the slow recovery in the U.S.? To answer this question, we identify exogenous changes in six uncertainty proxies and quantify their contributions to GDP growth and the unemployment rate. Our results are threefold....

In early 2013 rumors about the Euro-appreciation gained momentum, which may lead to decreases in exports and increases in imports of the member states. Therefore, we investigate the impact of changes in the nominal Euro exchange rate vis-à-vis major currencies on export and import performance...

In this paper, we estimate a small New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for Germany for the period from 1975 to 1998 and use it to identify the structural shocks, which have driven the business cycle. For this purpose we apply indirect inference methods, that is we...

We examine the dynamics of bank lending to the private sector for countries of the Euro area by applying a Markov switching error correction model. We identify for Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Portugal stable, mean reverting regimes and unstable regimes with no tendency to return to the long...

This paper evaluates whether the Germany economy is currently affected by a credit crunch, i.e. a supply-side restriction of loans that is not in line with market interest rates and profitability of investment projects. With help of a disequilibrium-model, we calculate a credit supply and a...

In this paper we use the frequency domain Granger causality test of Breitung/Candelon (2006) to analyse short and long-run causality between energy prices and prices of food commodities. We find that the oil price Granger causes all the considered food prices. However, when controlling for...

In this study we introduce a new indicator for private consumption based on search query time series provided by Google Trends. The indicator is based on factors extracted from consumption-related search categories of the Google Trends application Insights for Search. The forecasting performance...

Im Juni 2008 ist die Inflationsrate im Euroraum auf 4% und damit ihren höchsten Wert seit Beginn der Währungsunion gestiegen, ausgelöst durch den kräftigen Anstieg der Preise für Rohöl und Nahrungsmittel, der von recht dauerhafter Natur sein dürfte. Die Europäische Zentralbank (EZB) hat...