Homepage
German economy in transition ‒ weak momentum, low potential growth The Joint Economic Forecast Project Group forecasts a 0.1% decline in Germany's gross domestic product in 2024.…
See page
Archive
Media Response Archive 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 December 2021 IWH: Ausblick auf Wirtschaftsjahr 2022 in Sachsen mit Bezug auf IWH-Prognose zu Ostdeutschland: "Warum Sachsens…
See page
East Germany
The Nasty Gap 30 years after unification: Why East Germany is still 20% poorer than the West Dossier In a nutshell The East German economic convergence process is hardly…
See page
Charts
Info Graphs Sometimes pictures say more than a thousand words. Therefore, we selected a few graphs to present our main topics visually. If you should have any questions or would…
See page
Financial Stability
Financial Systems: The Anatomy of the Market Economy How the financial system is constructed, how it works, how to keep it fit and what good a bit of chocolate can do. Dossier In…
See page
Executive Board and Supervisory Board
Executive and Supervisory Board As a membership corporation the IWH is statutably divided into different functional units of organisation (Management and Boards) through which it…
See page
Projects
Our Projects 07.2022 ‐ 12.2026 Evaluation of the InvKG and the federal STARK programme On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection, the IWH and the RWI…
See page
For How Long Do IMF Forecasts of World Economic Growth Stay Up-to-date?
Katja Heinisch, Axel Lindner
Applied Economics Letters,
No. 3,
2019
Abstract
This study analyses the performance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook output forecasts for the world and for both the advanced economies and the emerging and developing economies. With a focus on the forecast for the current year and the next year, we examine the durability of IMF forecasts, looking at how much time has to pass so that IMF forecasts can be improved by using leading indicators with monthly updates. Using a real-time data set for GDP and for indicators, we find that some simple single-indicator forecasts on the basis of data that are available at higher frequency can significantly outperform the IMF forecasts as soon as the publication of the IMF’s Outlook is only a few months old. In particular, there is an obvious gain using leading indicators from January to March for the forecast of the current year.
Read article
Financial Stability and Central Bank Governance
Michael Koetter, Kasper Roszbach, G. Spagnolo
International Journal of Central Banking,
No. 4,
2014
Abstract
The financial crisis has ignited a debate about the appropriate objectives and the governance structure of Central Banks. We use novel survey data to investigate the relation between these traits and banking system stability focusing in particular on their role in micro-prudential supervision. We find that the separation of powers between single and multiple bank supervisors cannot explain credit risk prior or during the financial crisis. Similarly, a large number of Central Bank governance traits do not correlate with system fragility. Only the objective of currency stability exhibits a significant relation with non-performing loan levels in the run-up to the crisis. This effect is amplified for those countries with most frequent exposure to IMF missions in the past. Our results suggest that the current policy discussion whether to centralize prudential supervision under the Central Bank and the ensuing institutional changes some countries are enacting may not produce the improvements authorities are aiming at. Whether other potential improvements in prudential supervision due to, for example, external disciplinary devices, such as IMF conditional lending schemes, are better suited to increase financial stability requires further research.
Read article
