Thema Geldpolitik

Target-Salden - ein Anker der Stabilität

Die Debatte über Target 2 - das Zahlungsverkehrssystem des Europäischen Systems der Zentralbanken - hat in den vergangenen Jahren zu kontroversen Diskussionen in Deutschland geführt. Die vorliegende Studie des DIW Berlin kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass die in diesem Zusammenhang vielfach geäußerten Ängste vor den Risiken für Deutschland größtenteils unbegründet sind. Demzufolge ist Deutschland nicht - ...

The Transmission of Oil and Food Prices to Consumer Prices: Evidence for the MENA Countries

This paper investigates the effects of global oil and food price shocks to consumer prices in Middle East-North African (MENA) countries using threshold cointegration methods. Oil and food price shocks increase domestic prices in the long run, whereby the impact of food prices dominates. While global prices are weakly exogenous, consumer prices respond to deviations from the equilibrium relationship. ...

Current Account Imbalances in the Euro Area: Does Catching up Explain the Development?

In the debate on global imbalances, the euro area countries received inreasing attention since the outbreak of the financial crisis. While the current account is on balance for the entire area, divergences between individual member states have increased since the introduction of the common currency and are part of the excessive imbalances procedure. This paper explores the determinants of the imbalances ...

The Global Dimension of Inflation: Evidence from Factor-Augmented Phillips Curve

We examine the global dimension of inflation in 24 OECD countries between 1980 and 2007 in a Phillips curve framework. We decompose output gaps and changes in unit labour costs into common (or global) and idiosyncratic components using a factor analysis and introduce these components separately in the regression. We find that the common component of changes in unit labour costs has a notable impact ...

Persistence and Cycles in the US Federal Funds Rate

This paper uses long-range dependence techniques to analyse two important features of the US Federal Funds effective rate, namely its persistence and cyclical behaviour. It examines annual, monthly, bi-weekly and weekly data, from 1954 until 2010. Two models are considered. One is based on an I(d) specification with AR(2) disturbances and the other on two fractional differencing structures, one at ...

Geldschwemme und die schleichende Zersplitterung des Euros: Von Tinas und Dicken Bertas: Kommentar

Monetary Commitment and Structural Reforms: A Dynamic Panel Analysis for Transition Economies

This paper examines the contemporaneous relationship between the exchange rate regime and structural economic reforms for a sample of CEEC/CIS transition countries. We investigate empirically whether structural reforms are complements or substitutes for monetary commitment in the attempt to improve macroeconomic performance. Both EBRD and EFW data suggest a negative relationship between flexible exchange ...

Effects of Global Liquidity on Commodity and Food Prices

This paper investigates the relationship between global liquidity and commodity and food prices applying a global cointegrated vector-autoregressive model. We use different measures of global liquidity and various indices of commodity and food prices for the period 1980-2011. Our results support the hypothesis that there is a positive long-run relation between global liquidity and the development of ...

Sovereign Bond Yield Spreads: A Time-Varying Coefficient Approach

We study the determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads across 10 EMU countries between Q1/1999 and Q1/2010. We apply a semiparametric time-varying coefficient model to identify, to what extent an observed change in the yield spread is due to a shift in macroeconomic fundamentals or due to altering risk pricing. We find that at the beginning of EMU, the government debt level and the general investors' ...

Sovereign Risk Premiums in the European Government Bond Market

This paper provides a study of bond yield differentials among EU government bonds on the basis of a unique data set of issue spreads in the US and DM (Euro) bond market between 1993 and 2009. Interest differentials between bonds issued by EU countries and Germany or the USA contain risk premiums which increase with fiscal imbalances and depend negatively on the issuer's relative bond market size. The ...