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DIW Discussion Papers 1324 / 2013
Returns merely based on one purchasing price of an asset are uninformative for people regularly contributing to their old-age provision. Here, each purchase has an influence on the outcome. Still, they are commonly used in finance literature, giving an overly optimistic view of expected long-term stock market returns and risks. Moreover, around business cycle turning points when volatility is high, ...
2013| Dirk Ulbricht
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DIW Discussion Papers 1295 / 2013
After the global financial crisis, some governments in the EU experienced serious debt financing problems, while others were less affected. This paper seeks to shed light on the divergent fiscal performance by assessing the fiscal conduct in the EU countries before and after the outbreak of the crisis. Fiscal reaction functions of the primary balance are estimated for different groups of EU countries ...
2013| Guido Baldi, Karsten Staehr
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DIW Discussion Papers 1281 / 2013
We investigate whether people become more willingly self-employed during boom periods or in recessions and to what extent it is the business cycle or the employment status influencing entry rates into entrepreneurship. Our analysis for Germany reveals that start-up activities are positively influenced by unemployment rates and that the cyclical component of real GDP has a negative effect. This implies ...
2013| Michael Fritsch, Alexander S. Kritikos, Katharina Pijnenburg
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DIW Discussion Papers 1272 / 2013
The self-employment rate includes entrepreneurs out of opportunity and entrepreneurs out of necessity. While the effect of opportunity entrepreneurs on economic development should be positive, there should be no or a negative effect of necessity entrepreneurship. We use a geographically weighted regression (GWR) approach to analyze whether the effect of self-employment on economic development is heterogeneous ...
2013| Katharina Pijnenburg
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DIW Discussion Papers 1270 / 2013
Spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence are two well established aspects of house price developments. However, the analysis of differences in spatial dependence across time and space has not gained much attention yet. In this paper we jointly analyze these three aspects of spatial data. We apply a panel smooth transition regression model that allows for heterogeneity across time and space in spatial ...
2013| Katharina Pijnenburg
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DIW Discussion Papers 1180 / 2011
This paper examines whether government ideology has influenced monetary policy in OECD countries. We use quarterly data in the 1980.1-2005.4 period and exclude EMU countries. Our Taylor-rule specification focuses on the interactions of a new time-variant index of central bank independence with government ideology. The results show that leftist governments have somewhat lower short-term nominal interest ...
2011| Ansgar Belke, Niklas Potrafke
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DIW Discussion Papers 1178 / 2011
This study assesses how banking sector integration and especially cross-border lending affect macroeconomic stability. I use a two-country general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks that are hit by idiosyncratic shocks. According to the concept of granularity, idiosyncratic shocks to large firms (or: banks) do not have to cancel out under a skewed distribution of firm sizes. Given the highly ...
2011| Franziska Bremus
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DIW Discussion Papers 1173 / 2011
We evaluate the informational content of ex post and ex ante predictors of periods of excess stock (market) valuation. For a cross section comprising 10 OECD economies and a time span of at most 40 years alternative binary chronologies of price bubble periods are determined. Using these chronologies as dependent processes and a set of macroeconomic and financial variables as explanatory variables, ...
2011| Helmut Herwartz, Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 1168 / 2011
In this paper, we propose an indicator of the homeownership rate based on Internet ads offering the housing for rent and sale. We constructed the HOR estimate using the number of ads in four different markets (flats for rent, flats for sale, houses for rent, and houses for sale). Our HOR indicator was tested using data of German NUTS1 and planning (ROR) regions. The correlation between our estimate ...
2011| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Andreas Mense
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DIW Discussion Papers 1165 / 2011
This paper analyses two well-known features of interest rates, namely their time dependence and their cyclical structure. Specifically, it focuses on the monthly Euribor rate, using monthly data from January 1994 to May 2011. Models based on fractional integration at the long run or zero frequency, although adequately describing the persistent behaviour of the series, do not take into account its cyclical ...
2011| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana