After the stagnation prevailing since spring 2014, economic activity in Austria will remain subdued also in early 2015. Leading indicators have lately given no firm hopes for a cyclical rebound. From a short-term perspective, the conditions for a normal recovery of demand and output in Austria...

When dealing with credit booms driven by capital inflows, monetary authorities in emerging markets are often reluctant to raise interest rates, as they fear that an increase attracts even more capital and appreciates the currency. A number of countries therefore use reserve requirements as an...

Reserve requirements are a prominent policy instrument in many emerging countries. The present study investigates the circumstances under which reserve requirements are an appropriate policy tool for price or financial stability. We consider a small open-economy model with sticky prices,...

Recent institutional changes in the European Union have strengthened the original Stability and Growth Pact by negotiating the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union ("fiscal compact"). The cyclically-adjusted budget balance is the main quantitative...

Im IV. Quartal 2012 ging die heimische Wirtschaftsleistung leicht zurück. Die Wachstumsdämpfung ist vor allem auf die Schwäche der Weltwirtschaft und die damit verbundene Verringerung der internationalen Kapital- und Handelsströme zurückzuführen. Anfang 2013 zog die Weltkonjunktur wieder...

In this paper we present a new long-term database on monthly export and import series for 23 economies during 1921-2010 and its first empirical application. Using these data, we analyse the synchronised decline in foreign trade during the recession 2008-09 in a historical perspective. We...

While short-term prospects for the Austrian economy have weakened since last June's forecast revision, the pattern of risks is somewhat uneven as external downward risks slightly dominate domestic upward risks. Against this background, Austria's GDP is expected to grow by 0.6 percent in 2012 and...

Austria's gross domestic product contracted at a quarter-on-quarter rate of 0.1 percent in real terms in the fourth quarter of 2011. The decline was dampened by gross investment and the persistent stability in private consumption. Industrial production declined markedly in December. Economic...

Short-term prospects for the Austrian economy have hardly changed since the revision of the WIFO forecast of last December. As expected, demand and output edged down slightly in the fourth quarter 2012, but leading indicators kept heading up during the first three months of 2013. Having...

Overall, the latest data on the state of the global economy suggest that the upswing will continue; they are somewhat mixed, however. Growth remains robust in the USA, Latin America and South East Asia. Developments in the euro area, by contrast, continue to be characterised by the debt crisis....