Germany and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (the CE4) have been in a process of deepening economic integration which has lead to the development of a dynamic supply chain within Europe — the Germany-Central European Supply Chain (GCESC). Model-based simulations suggest two...

This paper examines exchange rate pass-through into German import unit values over the last 20 years. I find incomplete pass-through to be the predominant characteristic for German imports with an average rate of 42% over three months. This result holds when considering monthly 8-digit data, the...

We calibrate a closed multi-country input-output model with data from the World Input-Output Database to estimate the size of spillover effects of Germany's final demand on GDP, employment, and the trade balance in Southern European countries. We find that spillover effects are rather small....

Despite performing very positively on some key macroeconomic indicators in recent years, the German economy is in grave disequilibrium if the high current account surplus is included in the analysis. The paper scrutinises the evolution of Germany's external surplus since the inception of the...

This paper investigates price discrimination of German exporters across different foreign markets. We examine the degree of pass-through of exchange rate fluctuations in the pricing of 70 export items. The model is estimated using panel data on export unit values. Parameter estimation relies on...

Die ökonomischen Implikationen einer verstärkten Migration deutscher Unternehmen nach Osteuropa und Asien werden derzeit intensiv diskutiert. Wichtige wirtschaftliche Akteure sind KMU des verarbeitenden Gewerbes, die zum einen Elemente komplexer Wertschöpfungsketten bilden, zum anderen...

Die Biotechnologie, identifiziert als eine der strategischen Zukunftstechnologien, ist gekennzeichnet durch eine hohe Forschungsintensität mit breiten Anwendungsfeldern. Nach einer seit 2001 andauernden Konsolidierungsphase steht die Branche gegenwärtig vor neuen Herausforderungen: der...

It has become common to measure the quality of exports using their unit export value (UEV). Applications of this method include studies of intra-industry trade (IIT) and analyses of industrial "competitiveness". This literature seems to assume that export quality and export price (the most...

Corporate organization varies within a country and across countries with country size. The paper starts by establishing some facts about corporate organization based on unique data of 660 Austrian and German corporations. The larger country (Germany) has larger firms with flatter more decentral...

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...