In this paper, an Unobserved Components Model is employed to decompose German real GDP into the trend, cycle and seasonal components and the working day effect. The most important findings are: 1) The growth rate of potential output declined from 4.2 per cent in the sixties to 1.4 per cent at...

This paper examines regional differences in subjective well-being (SWB) in Germany. Inferential statistics indicate a diminishing but still significant gap between East and West Germany, but also differing levels of SWB within both parts. The observed regional pattern of life satisfaction...

The time series properties of German GDP have been re-examined in recent research. Extending the sample to include GDP data from 1950 onwards, some researchers argued in favor of a trend-stationary rather than difference stationary representation of real log GDP. We show that this conclusion is...