Refugee Migration – A Global Humanitarian Crisis Reaches Germany
Policy Brief Nr.,
No. 1,
2015
Abstract
Die gegenwärtige Situation der Flüchtlingsmigration nach Europa trägt krisenhafte Züge, zum einen aufgrund der großen Zahl der Flüchtenden, zum anderen, weil das bestehende Asylsystem in Europa grundsätzliche Probleme aufweist und daher der Lage nicht gewachsen ist – und das, obwohl die Problematik an sich nicht neu ist. Die Integration der ankommenden Menschen in Gesellschaft und Arbeitsmarkt hat sprachliche, qualifikatorische, kulturelle und politische Dimensionen.
Im Leibniz-Forschungsverbund “Krisen einer globalisierten Welt“ arbeiten 23 Leibniz-Institute zusammen, um inter- und transdisziplinär die Mechanismen und Dynamiken von Krisen und deren wechselseitige Interdependenzen besser zu verstehen. Im vorliegenden Policy Brief wird die aktuelle Flüchtlingsmigration nach Europa aus verschiedenen Perspektiven betrachtet und Literatur aus den beteiligten Instituten zu diesem Thema in einen Kontext gesetzt.
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Exit Expectations and Debt Crises in Currency Unions
Alexander Kriwoluzky, G. J. Müller, M. Wolf
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 18,
2015
Abstract
Membership in a currency union is not irreversible. Exit expectations may emerge during sovereign debt crises, because exit allows countries to reduce their liabilities through a currency redenomination. As market participants anticipate this possibility, sovereign debt crises intensify. We establish this formally within a small open economy model of changing policy regimes. The model permits explosive dynamics of debt and sovereign yields inside currency unions and allows us to distinguish between exit expectations and those of an outright default. By estimating the model on Greek data, we quantify the contribution of exit expectations to the crisis dynamics during 2009 to 2012.
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International Banking and Liquidity Risk Transmission: Evidence from Canada
James Chapman, H. Evren Damar
IMF Economic Review,
No. 3,
2015
Abstract
This paper investigates how liquidity conditions in Canada may affect domestic and/or foreign lending of globally active Canadian banks, and whether this transmission is influenced by individual bank characteristics. It finds that Canadian banks expanded their foreign lending during the recent financial crisis, often through acquisitions of foreign banks. It also finds evidence that internal capital markets play a role in the lending activities of globally active Canadian banks during times of heightened liquidity risk.
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The Impact of Securitization on Credit Rationing: Empirical Evidence
Santiago Carbo-Valverde, Hans Degryse, Francisco Rodríguez-Fernández
Journal of Financial Stability,
2015
Abstract
We study whether banks’ involvement into different types of securitization activity – asset backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds – in Spain influences credit supply before and during the financial crisis. While both ABS and covered bonds were hit by the crisis, the former were hit more severely. Employing a disequilibrium model to identify credit rationing, we find that firms with banks that were more involved in securitization see their credit constraints more relaxed in normal periods. In contrast, only greater covered bonds issuance reduces credit rationing during crisis periods whereas ABS aggravates these firms’ credit rationing in crisis periods. Our results are in line with the theoretical predictions that a securitization instrument that retains risk (covered bond) may induce a more prudent risk behavior of banks than an instrument that provides risk transferring (ABS).
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“The German Saver” and the Low Policy Rate Environment
Reint E. Gropp, Vahid Saadi
IWH Online,
No. 9,
2015
Abstract
It is widely claimed that “the German saver” suffers (i.e. generates significantly lower returns on her savings) in the low interest environment that Germany currently experiences relative to a high interest rate environment. With “low interest rate environment”, the observers tend to mean “low policy rates”, i.e. the European Central Bank’s (ECB) main refinancing rate.
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Bank Market Power, Factor Reallocation, and Aggregate Growth
R. Inklaar, Michael Koetter, Felix Noth
Journal of Financial Stability,
2015
Abstract
Using a unique firm-level sample of approximately 700,000 firm-year observations of German small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this study seeks to identify the effect of bank market power on aggregate growth components. We test for a pre-crisis sample whether bank market power spurs or hinders the reallocation of resources across informationally opaque firms. Identification relies on the dependence on external finance in each industry and the regional demarcation of regional banking markets in Germany. The results show that bank markups spur aggregate SME growth, primarily through technical change and the reallocation of resources. Banks seem to need sufficient markups to generate the necessary private information to allocate financial funds efficiently.
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