Housing rents in Germany have been rising for several years. Especially in major cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich, the increases have recently been higher than the German average growth rate of rents that makes up roughly two percent. The German government would like to respond to this...

In this paper, the authors construct a unique data set of Internet offer prices for flats in 48 large European cities from 24 countries. The data are collected between January and May 2012 from 33 websites, where the advertisements of flats for sale are placed. Using the resulting sample of...

The surge in the German house prices starting in 2010 raised fears about the emergence of a speculative bubble. Given a local nature of housing markets, it is not clear to what extent the bubble, if any, is spread across different cities. In this paper, we test for speculative house price...

In an uncertain world, decisions by market participants are based on expectations. Thus, sentiment indicators reflecting expectations are proven at predicting economic variables. However, survey respondents largely perceive the world through media reports. Typically, crude media information,...

Expectations form the basis of economic decisions of market participants in an uncertain world. Sentiment indicators reflect those expectations and thus have a proven track record for predicting economic variables. However, respondents of surveys perceive the world to a large extent with the...

In this paper, the authors construct a unique data set of Internet offer prices for flats in 48 large European cities across 24 countries. The data collected between January and May 2012 from 33 websites, are drawn from Internet advertisements of dwellings. Using the resulting sample of more...

In this paper, we examine the predictive ability of automatic and expert-rated media sentiment indicators for German inflation. We find that sentiment indicators are competitive in providing inflation forecasts against a large set of common macroeconomic and financial predictors. Sophisticated...

In the light of the unconventional monetary policies implemented by most large central banks around the world, there is an intense debate about the potential impact on the prices of capital assets. Particularly in Germany, skepticism about the sustainability of the current policy by the European...

Die Mietpreise in Deutschland steigen seit einigen Jahren wieder stärker. Vor allem in Metropolen wie Berlin, Hamburg und München lagen die Zunahmen zuletzt über dem gesamtdeutschen Durchschnitt von rund zwei Prozent. Die Bundesregierung möchte auf diese Entwicklung mit einer Mietpreisbremse...

Expectations form the basis of economic decisions of market participants in an uncertain world. Sentiment indicators reflect those expectations and thus have a proven track record for predicting economic variables. However, respondents of surveys perceive the world to a large extent with the...