The NAIRU is a key component of potential output and as such critically affects output gap estimates. In May 2014, the European Commission changed its specification of the NAIRU for several countries and lowered its NAIRU estimates - in the case of Spain from 26.6% to 20.7% for 2015. To test the...

In den letzten zehn Jahren ist die makroökonomische Bilanz Deutschlands sehr widersprüchlich ausgefallen: Einer Zurückeroberung der internationalen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und offensichtlichen Erfolgen im Außenhandel steht eine weiterhin schwache inländische Nachfrage und eine immer noch...

Der Teilumstieg vom umlagefinanzierten gesetzlichen Rentensystem hin zur kapitalgedeckten Riester-Rente hält nicht, was er verspricht. Viele haben keinen Riester-Vertrag oder zahlen wenig ein. Finanzmarkt- und Euro-Krise reduzieren die Renditen. Auch mit der Kapitaldeckung können die...

In this paper we present a methodology which can help to improve the assessment of the current economic situation. We propose an approach which combines multivariate single equations to forecast the monthly growth rate of industrial production with a density forecast. This allows to estimate the...

This paper investigates the differences between directly and indirectly seasonally adjusted aggregates. This difference is derived analytically for linear seasonal adjustment methods. GDP data for five European countries and three classes of seasonal adjustment methods are used to show...

Both the German federal as well as the general government recorded a surplus for the fourth time in a row in 2017. The fast consolidation after the Great Recession coincided with the transition period for the full introduction of the federal debt brake, which is sometimes interpreted as...