German unifikation hit the West German economy in a prosperous and appeared as a huge demand shock at least for the first few quarters. This combination resulted in a major increase of imports from the main trading partners of West Germany, which may have helped to cushion recessionary trends...

This paper presents a business cycle analysis of monetary policy shocks measured by disturbances to open market operations, i.e. the ratio of open market papers to non-borrowed reserves. We find empirical evidence for the usefulness of this policy measure, as it predicts significant declines in...