Recent studies have proposed several factors that determine how fiscal consolidations affect the economy. This Roundup focuses on several of these determinants. Namely, it discusses how the composition of the consolidation measure, the state of the business cycle, the level of private indebtedness and the amount of fiscal stress during which the measure is implemented influences the consequences of ...
The ECB announced in October 2018 that it would begin to cut back the amount of monthly asset purchases starting January 2018 while extending the duration of the purchases until at least September 2018. At it latest Governor’s Council meeting in January 2019 it decided to remain on this track despite a sharp appreciation of the euro in the meanwhile. These steps were just two on a longer and potentially ...
Weltweit wird die Wehrpflicht in etwa 60 Ländern praktiziert. Die Dauer des Wehrdienstes, definiert als die Ausübung eines gesetzlich verpflichtenden Dienstes in den Streitkräften eines Staates, variiert je nach Land. und beträgt in den meisten europäischen Ländern weniger als ein Jahr. In Ländern mit angespannter Sicherheitslage kann der Wehrdienst jedoch deutlich länger dauern, wie z.B. in Südkorea ...
Global capital flows have strongly increased from the 1980s until the outbreak of the financial crisis. As a result of this development, Germany's foreign investment has risen to around 250 percent of gross domestic product while foreign investments in Germany have increased to about 200 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product. This positive difference between Germany’s assets and liabilities is ...
Finanzkrise stark gestiegen. Im Zuge dessen sind etwa die Auslandsinvestitionen Deutschlands auf rund 250 Prozent in Relation zum Bruttoinlandsprodukt, die Investitionen des Auslands in Deutschland auf etwa 200 Prozent gestiegen. Diese positive Differenz ist eine Folge der kontinuierlichen Leistungsbilanzüberschüsse Deutschlands, welche die Nettofinanzflüsse abbilden – also die Differenz zwischen Ab- ...
After the establishment of the Banking Union, the European Commission is working on measures to foster capital market deepening in Europe. Key goals for a European Capital Markets Union are to provide firms with alternative funding sources to bank credit and to make economies more resilient to local shocks through better international risk sharing. While open capital markets can improve portfolio diversification, ...
Financial market indicators can provide valuable information for forecasting macroeconomic developments. In response to the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, the role of financial variables for forecasting has been revisited, and new empirical and theoretical forecasting methods able to explicitly incorporate financial market information have been developed. This roundup discusses characteristics ...
Microenterprises account for a large fraction of employment in developing countries and they are likely to increase in importance in the future. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, around 8 million additional jobs need to be created annually in order to cope with the increasing number of new entrants into the labour market (The World Bank, 2013). As microenterprises typically only provide subsistence ...
Mental health conditions are a leading cause of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and health costs worldwide: They account for 199 million DALYs or 37 percent of healthy life years lost from non-communicable diseases. The sum of direct and indirect costs worldwide were estimated to amount to 2.5 trillion US dollars in 2010 and projected to increase to 6 trillion US dollars in 2030 (Bloom et al., ...
Vor dem Hintergrund knapper öffentlicher Ressourcen bilden Effizienzanalysen ein zentrales Instrument im Prozess der politischen Entscheidungsfindung. Durch die Gegenüberstellung von Kosten und Nutzen können sie die Frage beantworten, ob und in welche frühkindlichen Bildungs- und Betreuungsangebote investiert werden sollte. Dieser Roundup zeigt methodische Herausforderungen auf und gibt einen Überblick ...
Since the 1990s, (onshore) wind power has become an important technology for electricity generation throughout the world. The economic rationale is the mitigation of negative externalities of conventional technologies, in particular emissions from fossil fuel combustion. However, wind power itself is not free of externalities. Wind turbines are alleged visual and noise impacts as well as threats to ...
In many advanced economies, there has been a declining trend in interest rates over the past thirty years. Since the financial crisis, interest rates have remained particularly low. Though a decrease in inflation explains part of the fall in nominal interest rates, there is also a clear downtrend in real interest rates. Against this backdrop, a debate has emerged over the factors that might have contributed ...
The concept of the natural rate of interest (NRI) dates back to Wicksell (1898) and has since then been highly debated in the economic literature. In practice, estimates of the NRI can be employed as a versatile tool for macroeconomic analysis and are a core element within the popular neo-Wicksellian (or New-Keynesian) framework. The real rate gap, i.e. the difference between the actual interest rate ...
The term natural (or neutral) real interest rate refers to the equilibrium value of the real interest rate. As this equilibrium is usually conceived as a situation where inflationary or deflationary pressures have abated, the natural real interest rate is a key concept for central banks seeking to stabilize the general price level or targeting the rate of inflation. The present roundup provides a brief ...
Inflation targeting has become one of the most prominent monetary regimes around the globe. Proponents argue that it reduces the dynamic inconsistency problem of monetary policy and thereby stabilises prices, which in turn promotes growth. Opponents, on the other hand, say that by focusing on price stability inflation targeting neglects other important policy objectives, such as financial stability, ...
Wie viel Zeit Menschen in ihre Erwerbsarbeit investieren wollen, können und müssen ist nicht nur für den Einzelnen, sondern auch für eine Ökonomie als Ganzes von zentraler Bedeutung. Doch je nach Studie und zugrundeliegendem Datensatz ergibt sich ein heterogenes Bild zur Über- und Unterbeschäftigung in Deutschland. Diesem Phänomen und seinen Ursachen geht der nachfolgende Bericht nach.
Kindertageseinrichtungen sollen als Ort der frühkindlichen Bildung die Entwicklung und Fähigkeiten von Kindern fördern. Die frühe Bildung ist besonders wichtig, da sich viele Fähigkeiten früh im Lebensverlauf herausbilden. Außerdem erleichtern früh erworbene Fähigkeiten den weiteren Erwerb von Fähigkeiten und beeinflussen somit die gesamte Bildungsbiografie. Die ökonomische Forschung unterscheidet ...
While combating tax evasion ranks highly on the international policy agenda and journalists are covering leak after leak, the economics profession at large has somewhat neglected the subject until recently. In the last years, however, a combination of better international financial data and ingenious identification strategies in several pioneering studies has made the subject popular in empirical economics. ...
Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) einen Bericht vorgestellt, in dem sie eine 20%-ige Steuer auf zuckergesüßte Getränke empfiehlt (WHO 2016). Zuletzt hat Großbritannien die Einführung einer solchen Abgabe im Haushalt 2016 beschlossen und erwartet, nebst Einnahmen von 520 Millionen Pfund im ersten Jahr, einen deutlichen Rückgang des Übergewichts (HM Treasury 2016). Ob eine solche fiskalische Konsumsteuerung ...
Parental leave policies are a major policy tool used across OECD countries to support families before and after child birth. There are large differences across countries in the amount and the duration of benefit payments as well as leave entitlement periods. Despite these differences, the shared goal of parental leave policies is to reconcile family life and work, and support child development. While ...