During the Euro Area crisis huge changes in international capital flows occurred associated with a high level of economic uncertainty. While it is evident that both factors are able to trigger or amplify economic shocks posing a threat for economic activity it is a natural question whether they...

The increasing use of food commodities for biofuel production has substantial impact on prices and quantities of these and other food commodities. It is therefore likely that this trend also intensifies the competition for arable land. However, evidence for this hypothesis is generated by...

Information about special events can improve economic forecasts substantially. However, due to the lack of timely quantitative data about these events, it has been difficult for professional forecasters to utilise such information in their forecasts. This paper investigates whether Internet...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a credit crunch occurred in Germany during the recent financial crisis and to analyze the underlying factors. In order to disentangle credit supply and demand we specify a theory-based dynamic disequilibrium model of the German credit market....

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...

Recent oil price shocks have relatively small effects on real economic activity and inflation compared to the experiences of the seventies and the early eighties. In this paper we analyse possible reasons for these phenomena using the example of the German economy. At first, by estimating a...

In this paper we analyse to what extent movements in oil prices can help to explain business cycle fluctuations in Germany.We proceed in several steps:As a starting point we use a standard real business cycle model for the German economy and introduce energy as an additional factor in the...

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...

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...

It is unclear whether the exceptionally highU.S. current account deficit can be sustained for a prolonged period. In this paper we approach the topic whether a gradual adjustment or a pronounced reduction of the deficit is likely to occur. We therefore characterize the dynamics of the current...