Aufschwung bleibt moderat — Wirtschaftspolitik wenig wachstumsorientiert
Roland Döhrn, Ferdinand Fichtner, Oliver Holtemöller, Timo Wollmershäuser
Wirtschaftsdienst,
Nr. 5,
2016
Abstract
Die deutsche Wirtschaft befindet sich in einem moderaten Aufschwung. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt die Mitte April veröffentlichte Gemeinschaftsdiagnose der Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute. Das Bruttoinlandsprodukt dürfte demnach in diesem Jahr um 1,6% und im kommenden Jahr um 1,5% zulegen. Getragen wird der Aufschwung vom privaten Konsum, der vom anhaltenden Beschäftigungsaufbau, den spürbaren Steigerungen der Lohn- und Transfereinkommen und den Kaufkraftgewinnen infolge der gesunkenen Energiepreise profitiert.
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Nested Models and Model Uncertainty
Alexander Kriwoluzky, Christian A. Stoltenberg
Scandinavian Journal of Economics,
Nr. 2,
2016
Abstract
Uncertainty about the appropriate choice among nested models is a concern for optimal policy when policy prescriptions from those models differ. The standard procedure is to specify a prior over the parameter space, ignoring the special status of submodels (e.g., those resulting from zero restrictions). Following Sims (2008, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 32, 2460–2475), we treat nested submodels as probability models, and we formalize a procedure that ensures that submodels are not discarded too easily and do matter for optimal policy. For the United States, we find that optimal policy based on our procedure leads to substantial welfare gains compared to the standard procedure.
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Does the Technological Content of Government Demand Matter for Private R&D? Evidence from US States
Viktor Slavtchev, Simon Wiederhold
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics,
Nr. 2,
2016
Abstract
Governments purchase everything from airplanes to zucchini. This paper investigates the role of the technological content of government procurement in innovation. In a theoretical model, we first show that a shift in the composition of public purchases toward high-tech products translates into higher economy-wide returns to innovation, leading to an increase in the aggregate level of private R&D. Using unique data on federal procurement in US states and performing panel fixed-effects estimations, we find support for the model's prediction of a positive R&D effect of the technological content of government procurement. Instrumental-variable estimations suggest a causal interpretation of our findings.
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Asymmetric Investment Responses to Firm-specific Uncertainty
Julian Berner, Manuel Buchholz, Lena Tonzer
Abstract
This paper analyzes how firm-specific uncertainty affects firms’ propensity to invest. We measure firm-specific uncertainty as firms’ absolute forecast errors derived from survey data of German manufacturing firms over 2007–2011. In line with the literature, our empirical findings reveal a negative impact of firm-specific uncertainty on investment. However, further results show that the investment response is asymmetric, depending on the size and direction of the forecast error. The investment propensity declines significantly if the realized situation is worse than expected. However, firms do not adjust their investment if the realized situation is better than expected, which suggests that the uncertainty effect counteracts the positive effect due to unexpectedly favorable business conditions. This can be one explanation behind the phenomenon of slow recovery in the aftermath of financial crises. Additional results show that the forecast error is highly concurrent with an ex-ante measure of firm-specific uncertainty we obtain from the survey data. Furthermore, the effect of firm-specific uncertainty is enforced for firms that face a tighter financing situation.
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International Banking and Liquidity Risk Transmission: Evidence from Canada
James Chapman, H. Evren Damar
IMF Economic Review,
Nr. 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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Gemeinschaftsdiagnose: Flüchtlingsmigration stellt Wirtschaftspolitik vor Herausforderungen
Roland Döhrn, Ferdinand Fichtner, Oliver Holtemöller, Timo Wollmershäuser
Wirtschaftsdienst,
Nr. 10,
2015
Abstract
Die an der Gemeinschaftsdiagnose teilnehmenden Institute prognostizieren in ihrer Herbstdiagnose, dass die deutsche Wirtschaft in diesem und im kommenden Jahr um jeweils 1,8% expandieren wird. Damit setzt sich zwar der Aufschwung fort, er dürfte aber moderat bleiben. Bremsend wirkt die Abschwächung des Wachstums in den Schwellenländern. Im weiteren Prognosezeitraum wird der Aufschwung vor allem von den privaten Konsumausgaben getragen. Zwar wurden auch die Sachinvestitionen des Staates ausgeweitet. Für moderne Volkswirtschaften sind Investitionen in Köpfe aber wichtiger als Investitionen in Beton. Im Bereich der Bildung gilt es, Wachstumspotenziale zu heben.
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Global Food Prices and Business Cycle Dynamics in an Emerging Market Economy
Oliver Holtemöller, Sushanta Mallick
Abstract
This paper investigates a perception in the political debates as to what extent poor countries are affected by price movements in the global commodity markets. To test this perception, we use the case of India to establish in a standard SVAR model that global food prices influence aggregate prices and food prices in India. To further analyze these empirical results, we specify a small open economy New-Keynesian model including oil and food prices and estimate it using observed data over the period from 1996Q2 to 2013Q2 by applying Bayesian estimation techniques. The results suggest that big part of the variation in inflation in India is due to cost-push shocks and, mainly during the years 2008 and 2010, also to global food price shocks, after having controlled for exogenous rainfall shocks. We conclude that the inflationary supply shocks (cost-push, oil price, domestic food price and global food price shocks) are important contributors to inflation in India. Since the monetary authority responds to these supply shocks with a higher interest rate which tends to slow growth, this raises concerns about how such output losses can be prevented by reducing exposure to commodity price shocks and thereby achieve higher growth.
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Public Bank Guarantees and Allocative Efficiency
Reint E. Gropp, Andre Guettler, Vahid Saadi
Abstract
In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many governments extended public guarantees to banks. We take advantage of a natural experiment, in which long-standing public guarantees were removed for a set of German banks following a lawsuit, to identify the real effects of these guarantees on the allocation of credit (“allocative efficiency”). Using matched bank/firm data, we find that public guarantees reduce allocative efficiency. With guarantees in place, poorly performing firms invest more and maintain higher rates of sales growth. Moreover, firms produce less efficiently in the presence of public guarantees. Consistently, we show that guarantees reduce the likelihood that firms exit the market. These findings suggest that public guarantees hinder restructuring activities and prevent resources to flow to the most productive uses.
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Are there Business Cycles “beyond GDP“? Alternative Measures to GDP at Business Cycle Frequencies
Jörg Döpke, Philip Maschke
Applied Economics Quarterly,
Nr. 2,
2015
Abstract
We discuss properties of alternatives or complements to GDP as a measure of welfare at business cycle frequencies. Our results imply that the suggested indicators show practically no cycle at all and their methodologies can be questioned. First, data are not available at an appropriate quality and frequency. Second, the suggested time series sometimes correlate negatively with each other. Third, cross-section and quasi-panel evidence based on different samples of countries reveals no impact of the stance of the business cycle on some suggested welfare measures. Therefore, alternative welfare measures do not show an equal picture on business cycle frequencies compared to GDP-based measures.
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The Quantity Theory Revisited: A New Structural Approach
Makram El-Shagi, Sebastian Giesen
Macroeconomic Dynamics,
Nr. 1,
2015
Abstract
We propose a unified identification scheme to identify monetary shocks and track their propagation through the economy. We combine three approaches dealing with the consequences of monetary shocks. First, we adjust a state space version of the P-star type model employing money overhang as the driving force of inflation. Second, we identify the contemporaneous impact of monetary policy shocks by applying a sign restriction identification scheme to the reduced form given by the state space signal equations. Third, to ensure that our results are not distorted by the measurement error exhibited by the official monetary data, we employ the Divisia M4 monetary aggregate provided by the Center for Financial Stability. Our approach overcomes one of the major difficulties of previous models by using a data-driven identification of equilibrium velocity. Thus, we are able to show that a P-star model can fit U.S. data and money did indeed matter in the United States.
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