On 5-6 September 2012 SUERF held its 30th Colloquium "States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economy" at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium. All the chapters in this publication discuss from different...

The Great Recession and the subsequent period of subdued GDP growth in most advanced economies have highlighted the need for macroeconomic forecasters to account for sudden and deep recessions, periods of higher macroeconomic volatility, and fluctuations in trend GDP growth. In this paper, we...

This paper analyzes the effects of short-time work (i.e., government subsidized working time reductions) on unemployment and output fluctuations. The central question is whether short-time work saves jobs in recessions. In our baseline scenario the rule based component of short-time work (i.e.,...

In this paper, we use the estimated three-region DSGE model GEAR, which pictures Germany, the Euro Area and the Rest of the world and which is used by the Deutsche Bundesbank for policy analysis, to analyze how discretionary fiscal policy in Germany and the rest of EMU affected GDP growth and...

This paper analyses the monetary and fiscal policy implications of output gap estimates in times of crisis. The widening of output gaps observed in major OECD economies in the wake of the recent crisis has been mainly due to total factor productivity gaps, except in the United States where it...

Policy reforms aimed at boosting long-run growth often have side effects – positive or negative – on an economy’s vulnerability to shocks and their propagation. Macroeconomic shocks as severe and protracted as those since 2007 warrant a reconsideration of the role growth-promoting policies...

This paper deals with fiscal policy over the business cycle when international financial markets are imperfect. I document evidence that government expenditure tends to be more procyclical the higher is the borrowing cost for a sovereign. Decomposing government expenditure components shows that...

In 2009, Germany invested 15.4 Billion Euro in infrastructure to avert the looming recession. In this study, we evaluate whether the German stimulus program was successful in limiting the impact of the crisis on the job market. We exploit exogenous cross-sectional variation to identify the...

This paper studies the impact of the state-dependent risk of a government default on the correlation of the scal balance and current account. We use a small open economy model where nonlinear risk premia arise endogenously when the government operates close to its scal limit, i.e. the maximum...

Using VAR analysis on US data, we show that unanticipated fiscal expansions boost private consumption and business formation. Models with an extensive investment margin, i.e. endogenous firm and product entry, have difficulties explaining these two phenomena simultaneously. Considering different...