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Economic Transition in Unified Germany and Implications for Korea

Hyung-Gon Jeong, Gerhard Heimpold
H.-G. Jeong and G. Heimpold (eds.): Economic Transition in Unified Germany and Implications for Korea. Policy References 17-13. Sejong: Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, 2017
Abstract
The reunification of Germany, which marked the end of the Cold War in the 20th century, is regarded as one of the most exemplary cases of social integration in human history. Nearly three decades after the German reunification, the economic and social shocks that occurred at the beginning of the reunification process have largely been resolved. Moreover, the unified Germany has grown into one of the most advanced economies in the world. The unification process that Germany underwent may not necessarily be the way that the Republic of Korea would choose. However, the economic and social exchanges between East and West Germany prior to unification, and the cooperation in a myriad of policies based on these exchanges, served as the crucial foundation for unification. The case of Germany will surely help us find a better way for the re-unification of the Korean Peninsula. In this context, this is the first edition of a joint research which provides diverse insights on social and economic issues during the process of unification. It consists of nine chapters whose main topics include policies on macroeconomic stabilization, the privatization of state-owned enterprises in East Germany, labor policies and the migration of labor, integration of the social safety nets of the North and South, and securing finances for reunification. To start with, the first part covers macroeconomic stabilization measures, which include policies implemented by the federal government of Germany to overcome macroeconomic shocks directly after the reunification. There was a temporary setback in the economy at the initial phase of reunification as the investment per GDP went down and the level of fiscal debt escalated, reverting to its original trend prior to the reunification. While it appears the momentum for growth was compromised by reunification from the perspective of growth rate of real GDP, this state did not last long and benefits have outpaced the costs since 2000. In the section which examines the privatization of state-owned enterprises in East Germany, an analysis was conducted on the modernization of industrial infrastructure of East German firms. There was a surge in investment in East German area at the beginning stages but this was focused on a specific group of firms. Most of the firms were privatized through unofficial channels, with a third of these conducted in a management buy-out (MBO) process that was highly effective. Further analysis of a firm called Jenoptik, which was successfully bailed out, is incorporated as to draw implications of its accomplishments. In the section on migration, we examine how the gap between the unemployment rates in the West and East have narrowed as the population flow shifted from the West to East. Consequently, there was no significant deviation in terms of the Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) per capita in each state of East Germany. However, as the labor market stabilized in East Germany and population flows have weakened, the deviation will become larger. Meanwhile, if we make a prediction about the movement of population between the North and the South, which show a remarkable difference in their economic circumstances, a radical reunification process such as Germany’s case would force 7% of the population of the North to move towards the South. Upon reunification, the estimated unemployment rate in North Korea would remain at least 30% for the time being. In order to reduce the initial unemployment rate, it is crucial to design a program that trains the unemployed and to build a system that predicts changes in labor demand. It seems nearly impossible to apply the social safety nets of the South to the North, as there is a systemic difference in ideologies. Taking steps toward integration would be the most suitable option in the case of the Koreas. We propose to build a sound groundwork for stabilizing the interest rates and exchange rates, maintain stable fiscal policies, raise momentum for economic growth and make sure people understand the means required to financially support the North in order to reduce the gap between the two. This book was jointly organized and edited by Dr. Hyung-gon Jeong of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP) and Dr. Gerhard Heimpold of the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). We believe that this report, which examines numerous social and economic agendas that emerged during the reunification of Germany, will provide truly important reference for both Koreas. It is also our view that it will serve as a stepping-stone to establish policies in regard to South-North exchanges across numerous sectors prior to discussions of reunification. KIEP will continue to work with IWH and contribute its expertise to the establishment of grounds for unification policies.
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EFN Report Winter 2017/18: Economic Outlook for the Euro Area in 2018 and 2019

EFN Reports, No. 1, 2018
Abstract
With advanced economies likely to face over-utilization of economic capacities in 2018 for the first time since the Great Recession, companies will further expand their investment activities. Price and wage dynamics will pick up globally, triggered by the recent increase in energy prices. A major risk for the world economy pertains to financial markets: measures for risk tolareance and valuations for many types of assets have approached levels last reached ten years ago, on the eve of the financial crisis. A sudden readjustment of asset prices and risk premia could worsen financial conditions globally and seriously affect the global economy. The cyclical upswing of the euro area economy continues. The recovery, under way since summer 2013, transformed into an upswing in autumn 2016 when demand from outside the euro area increased quite abruptly; higher exports and improved expectations have contrinuted to induce firms to invest more into equipment. Wage dynamics in the euro area appear to increase, but only slowly. An annual growth rate for hourly wage costs of about 2% is still not enough to put upward pressure on prices, but this will change eventually as the cyclical upswing is likely to continue. Inflation will, according to our forecast, reach the ECB’s target of below but close to 2% in the second half of 2019. Conditions for further healthy growth in the euro area are in place, but employment dynamics might markedly lose momentum in some member countries in the second half of 2018, as the potential labour force is becoming more and more exhausted. Overall, we forecast euro area GDP to grow by 2.2% in 2018 and by 1.5% in 2019.
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EFN Report Autumn 2017: Economic Outlook for the Euro Area in 2017 and 2018

EFN Reports, No. 4, 2017
Abstract
In 2017 the world economy is in an upswing, but consumer price inflation is still surprisingly low in advanced economies, and central banks will therefore keep key interest rates very low and financial conditions favorable for the rest of the year and, probably, for 2018. Global growth, though, will moderate a bit, since expansive policy measures in China have been reduced. As an early consequence, imports of emerging Asia were no more than stagnant during summer. The upswing in the euro area is broad based, both regionally and with respect to the different components of aggregate demand, as investment has recently picked up markedly, partly due to construction of dwellings. From the production side, the level of capacity utilization in the manufacturing sector is clearly above its long-term average and rising further. Inflation will not have reached the ECB’s target rate of below but close to 2% at the end of 2018. The trend of a growing participation rate in labour markets and the amount of part-time and low quality jobs are some reasons why overall wage and price dynamics are still very moderate; the appreciation of the euro, the incorporation of technical innovations and a possible change in the consumer preferences for low-cost products could be other reasons. We forecast a GDP growth rate of 2.3% for 2017 and 1.9% for 2018. This year’s strong pickup of world trade means that net exports will, in spite of rather strong domestic demand, contribute positively to GDP growth in 2017, while the opposite holds for 2018, due to the significant appreciation of the Euro.
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Non-linearity in the Finance-Growth Nexus: Evidence from Indonesia

Nuruzzaman Arsyad, Iftekhar Hasan, Wahyoe Soedarmono
International Economics, August 2017
Abstract
This paper investigates the finance-growth nexus where bank credit is decomposed into investment, consumption, and working capital credit. From a panel dataset of provinces in Indonesia, it documents that higher financial development measured by financial deepening and financial intermediation exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship with economic growth. This non-linear effect of financial deepening is driven by both investment credit and consumption credit. These results suggest that too much investment credit and, to a lesser extent, consumption credit are detrimental to economic growth. Ultimately, only financial intermediation associated with working capital credit has a positive and monotonic impact on economic growth.
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Do Local Banking Market Structures Matter for SME Financing and Performance? New Evidence from an Emerging Economy

Iftekhar Hasan, Krzysztof Jackowicz, Oskar Kowalewski, Łukasz Kozłowski
Journal of Banking and Finance, 2017
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between local banking structures and SMEs’ access to debt and performance. Using a unique dataset on bank branch locations in Poland and firm-, county-, and bank-level data, we conclude that a strong position for local cooperative banks facilitates access to bank financing, lowers financial costs, boosts investments, and favours growth for SMEs. Moreover, counties in which cooperative banks hold a strong position are characterized by a more rapid pace of new firm creation. The opposite effects appear in the majority of cases for local banking markets dominated by foreign-owned banks. Consequently, our findings are important from a policy perspective because they show that foreign bank entry and industry consolidation may raise valid concerns for SME prospects in emerging economies.
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Enabling the Wisdom of the Crowd: Transparency in Peer-to-Peer Finance

Oliver Rehbein, Michael Koetter
G20 Insights Policy Brief, Policy Area "Financial Resilience", 2017
Abstract
The rapid growth exhibited by peer-to-peer finance markets raises hopes that especially young ventures might obtain better access to funding. Yet, consumer protection concerns are looming as borrowers and projects requesting finance from the crowd are inherently opaque. We suggest clear rules to enable peer-to-peer lenders and investors to more effectively screen projects. We plea for strengthening self-responsibility of the investor crowd by clearly assigning, and limiting the responsibilities of regulatory authorities and recognizing the regulatory difference between new peer-to-peer, and traditional financial markets. As a result the peer-to-peer market can develop to more effectively complement traditional sources of finance, instead of turning into a funding source for bad investment projects looking to exploit uninformed lenders and investors.
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Tail-risk Protection Trading Strategies

Natalie Packham, Jochen Papenbrock, Peter Schwendner, Fabian Wöbbeking
Quantitative Finance, No. 5, 2017
Abstract
Starting from well-known empirical stylized facts of financial time series, we develop dynamic portfolio protection trading strategies based on econometric methods. As a criterion for riskiness, we consider the evolution of the value-at-risk spread from a GARCH model with normal innovations relative to a GARCH model with generalized innovations. These generalized innovations may for example follow a Student t, a generalized hyperbolic, an alpha-stable or a Generalized Pareto distribution (GPD). Our results indicate that the GPD distribution provides the strongest signals for avoiding tail risks. This is not surprising as the GPD distribution arises as a limit of tail behaviour in extreme value theory and therefore is especially suited to deal with tail risks. Out-of-sample backtests on 11 years of DAX futures data, indicate that the dynamic tail-risk protection strategy effectively reduces the tail risk while outperforming traditional portfolio protection strategies. The results are further validated by calculating the statistical significance of the results obtained using bootstrap methods. A number of robustness tests including application to other assets further underline the effectiveness of the strategy. Finally, by empirically testing for second-order stochastic dominance, we find that risk averse investors would be willing to pay a positive premium to move from a static buy-and-hold investment in the DAX future to the tail-risk protection strategy.
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EFN Report Spring 2017: Economic Outlook for the Euro Area in 2017 and 2018

EFN Reports, No. 2, 2017
Abstract
Global economic activity appears to be expanding rapidly during spring 2017. Confidence among managers is either strong or has improved in all major regions, and world trade and industrial production have, after two years of weakness, picked up markedly during last winter. For 2 ½ years, the euro area economy has now been constantly expanding at an annual rate of about 1.6%, slightly above potential. Employment has also been expanding steadily. Production and employment have been recently rising almost everywhere, including countries such as France and Italy where unemployment rates still do not appear to be on a downward trend. Official investment data for 2015 and 2016 appear to be distorted: big multinational firms relocated parts of their assets (intellectual property products in particular) or their registered business offices from countries outside the euro area to Ireland. As a consequence, reported gross fixed capital formation in Ireland expanded by 33% in 2015 and by 45% in 2016. Without this effect, investment growth in the euro area is about one percentage point lower in 2015 and 2016. Headline inflation hit 2% in February, but this was only the effect of higher world oil prices. The core rate is stubbornly at slightly below 1%, and wages rise annually by scarcely 1.5%. The revival of the economy will have to continue for considerably more time until inflation will come close to the ECB target zone. As monetary conditions continue to support growth, financial policies will be slightly expansive, and a certain external stimulus should come from the apparent recovery of world trade. Overall, we forecast euro area GDP to expand by 1.7% in both 2017 and 2018. However, policy uncertainty is substantial and could have a negative effect. In particular, elections in member states might give power to movements that aim at disintegrating Europe. Such a turn could rapidly undermine confidence, in particular in the financial strength of highly indebted member states.
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Banks Credit and Productivity Growth

Fadi Hassan, Filippo di Mauro, Gianmarco Ottaviano
ECB Working Paper, No. 2008, 2017
Abstract
Financial institutions are key to allocate capital to its most productive uses. In order to examine the relationship between productivity and bank credit in the context of different financial market set-ups, we introduce a model of overlapping generations of entrepreneurs under complete and incomplete credit markets. Then, we exploit firm-level data for France, Germany and Italy to explore the relation between bank credit and productivity following the main derivations of the model. We estimate an extended set of elasticities of bank credit with respect to a series of productivity measures of firms. We focus not only on the elasticity between bank credit and productivity during the same year, but also on the elasticity between credit and future realised productivity. Our estimates show a clear Eurozone core-periphery divide, the elasticities between credit and productivity estimated in France and Germany are consistent with complete markets, whereas in Italy they are consistent with incomplete markets. The implication is that in Italy firms turn to be constrained in their long-term investments and bank credit is allocated less efficiently than in France and Germany. Hence capital misallocation by banks can be a key driver of the long-standing slow productivity growth that characterises Italy and other periphery countries. 
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How Do Insured Deposits Affect Bank Risk? Evidence from the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act

Claudia Lambert, Felix Noth, Ulrich Schüwer
Journal of Financial Intermediation, January 2017
Abstract
This paper tests whether an increase in insured deposits causes banks to become more risky. We use variation introduced by the U.S. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in October 2008, which increased the deposit insurance coverage from $100,000 to $250,000 per depositor and bank. For some banks, the amount of insured deposits increased significantly; for others, it was a minor change. Our analysis shows that the more affected banks increase their investments in risky commercial real estate loans and become more risky relative to unaffected banks following the change. This effect is most distinct for affected banks that are low capitalized.
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