Konjunkturzyklen um einen langfristigen Trend entstehen als Resultat unvorhersehbarer Impulse oder Schocks. Welche Arten von Schocks wesentlich für das Konjunkturgeschehen sind, ist ein empirisch und theoretisch umstrittenes Thema in der makroökonomischen Literatur und bildet eine der...

Seit der globalen Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise wird die Frage, ob Regierungen antizyklische Fiskalpolitik betreiben sollten, in akademischen Kreisen wieder vermehrt diskutiert. Eine vielfach benutzte Maßnahme sind temporäre schuldenfinanzierte Konsumsteuersenkungen.

Die Hartz Reformen wurden vor zehn Jahren als Antwort auf eine hohe und stetig wachsende Arbeitslosenquote in Deutschland eingeführt. Während der Erfolg der Reformen bezüglich der Senkung der Arbeitslosenquote nahezu unumstritten ist, herrscht Uneinigkeit über die Bedeutung der Reformen für...

While a widespread consensus exists among macroeconomists that the German labour market reforms in 2003-2005 have successfully contributed to the decline of the unemployment rate, critics claim that the reforms led to wage restraint and consequently consumption dampening accompanied by...

Recent empirical literature delivered, based on different structural VAR approaches, controversial results concerning the role of anticipated technology-news-shocks in business cycle fluctuations. We deal with this controversy and investigate (i) the extent to thich two prominent structural VAR...

In an influential recent paper, Beaudry and Portier (2006) propose a sequential approach for identifying technological news shocks. Thereby, the correlation coefficient between news shocks of a short-run identification scheme and technology shocks of a long-run identification scheme in the VAR...

We investigate German banks' exposure to interest rate risk. In finance, higher demand for a risky asset is typically associated with higher expected return. However, employing a utility function which implies both risk-averse and risk-seeking behavior depending on the level of profits, we show...

The paper investigates the effects of temporary consumption tax cuts using firm-level data. As part of its countercyclical measures implemented during the recent global economic crisis, Turkey temporarily lowered consumption taxes on selected durables. Using data on the change of sales of firms...

The paper attempts to provide an appropriate model specification for identifying technology and other macroeconomic shocks in a structural VAR framework. The investigation is conducted based on two seminal structural VAR studies by Gali (1999) and King et al. (1991). The models of these studies...

The paper questions the reasonability of using forecast error variance decompositions for assessing the role of different structural shocks in business cycle fluctuations. It is shown that the forecast error variance decomposition is related to a dubious definition of the business cycle. A...