Global stablecoins (GSCs) like Facebook's Libra could prove much more instable than they might appear at first sight. Not only can their exchange rates against individual fiat currencies fluctuate substantially; theoretically, they also have the potential to replace national currencies,...

Current Issues The Current Issues series, formerly Frankfurt Voice, treats economic and societal topics of fundamental importance. Currently, the main focus is on issues such as global growth centres, questions and problems relating to demographic developments world-wide, as well as China's and...

- Weltweit nehmen Kohle-, Öl- und Erdgasvorräte ab, der Energiebedarf dagegen steigt dramatisch an. Regenerative Energien mindern zwar die steigenden Klimagefahren, können aber unseren zukünftigen Energiebedarf in Ballungszentren kaum decken. Nach Einschätzung zahlreicher Experten gehört...

A large part of the current debate on US stock price behavior concentrates on the question of whether stock prices are driven by fundamentals or by non-fundamental factors. In this paper we put forward the hypothesis that a present value model with time-varying expected returns provides an...

This paper brings together the literature on determination of home bias in equity holdings and the portfolio balance model of exchange rates to consider whether the dollar might be affected by a change in transactions costs that alters international portfolio allocations. The empirical findings...

In this paper we question the consensus of using a binary crisis definition for empirical crisis models. We believe that the most severe shortcomings of the crisis models today are in the crisis definition rather than the explanatory variables. We present a crisis model that is specified for a...

This paper investigates the credit channel in Germany and the United Kingdom. The financial systems of these two countries show substantial structural differences, which leads one to expect that their real sectors respond differently to changes in monetary policy. To the extent that this is the...

With the "more economic approach" the EU is taking a new tack on merger control policy. This is visible not only in the new SIEC prohibition criterion and the criteria for appraising horizontal mergers but also in more recent decision-making practice. Greater legal certainty, on the one hand,...

The accession of several Central and Eastern European Countries to Euroland is likely to be realised within the next years. Some studies aim at analysing the suitability of these Euro aspirants for currency union with EMU by evaluating the related macroeconomic costs. Still, they are prone to...

Value at risk (VaR) has become a standard measure of portfolio risk over the last decade. It even became one of the corner stones in the Basel II accord about banks' equity requirements. Nevertheless, the practical application of the VaR concept suffers from two problems: how to estimate VaR and...