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DIW Discussion Papers 1350 / 2013
Structural identification schemes are of essential importance to vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis. This paper tests a commonly used structural parameter identification scheme to assess whether it can properly capture fundamental and non-fundamental shocks to stock prices. In particular, five related structural models, which are widely used in the literature on assessing stock price determinants ...
2013| Anton Velinov
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DIW Discussion Papers 1349 / 2013
This paper investigates the factors influencing banks' decision to engage in advanced risk management, from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective. In recent decades, credit risk management in banks has become highly sophisticated and banks have become more active and advanced in the management of credit risks. We identify two driving factors for risk management: bank competition and sector ...
2013| Dilek Bülbül, Hendrik Hakenes, Claudia Lambert
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DIW Discussion Papers 1348 / 2013
Does the mere presence of big banks affect macroeconomic outcomes? In this paper, we develop a theory of granularity (Gabaix, 2011) for the banking sector, introducing Bertrand competition and heterogeneous banks charging variable markups. Using this framework, we show conditions under which idiosyncratic shocks to bank lending can generate aggregate fluctuations in the credit supply when the banking ...
2013| Franziska Bremus, Claudia M. Buch, Katheryn N. Russ, Monika Schnitzer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1347 / 2013
This paper tests whether an increase in insured deposits causes banks to become more risky. We use variation introduced by the U.S. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in October 2008, which increased the deposit insurance coverage from $100,000 to $250,000 per depositor and bank. For some banks, the amount of insured deposits increased significantly; for others, it was a minor change. Our analysis ...
2013| Claudia Lambert, Felix Noth, Ulrich Schüwer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1346 / 2013
We explore the impact of large banks and of financial openness for aggregate growth. Large banks matter because of granular effects: if markets are very concentrated in terms of the size distribution of banks, idiosyncratic shocks at the bank-level do not cancel out in the aggregate but can affect macroeconomic outcomes. Financial openness may affect GDP growth in and of itself, and it may also influence ...
2013| Franziska Bremus, Claudia M. Buch
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DIW Discussion Papers 1345 / 2013
This paper investigates the empirical relevance of different unemployment theories in three major economies, namely the UK, the US and Japan, by estimating the degree of dependence in the unemployment series. Both univariate and multivariate long memory methods are used. The results vary depending on whether the former or the latter approach is followed. Specifically, when taking a univariate approach, ...
2013| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana, Yuliya Lovcha
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DIW Discussion Papers 1344 / 2013
Patterns in cross-border banking have changed since the global financial crisis. This may affect domestic bank market structures and macroeconomic stability in the longer term. In this study, I theoretically and empirically analyze how different modes of cross-border banking impact bank concentration. I use a two- country general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks developed by De Blas and Russ ...
2013| Franziska Bremus
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DIW Discussion Papers 1343 / 2013
Are capital controls and macroprudential measures successful in achieving their objectives? Assessing their effectiveness is complicated by selection bias and endogeneity; countries which change their capital-flow management measures (CFMs) often share specific characteristics and are responding to changes in variables that the CFMs are intended to influence. This paper addresses these challenges by ...
2013| Kristin Forbes, Marcel Fratzscher, Roland Straub
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DIW Discussion Papers 1342 / 2013
We analyse a stylized model of the world grain market characterized by a small oligopoly of traders with market power on both the supply and demand side. Crops are stochastic and exporting countries can impose export tariffs to protect domestic food prices. Our first results is that export tariffs are strategic complements and that for poor harvests equilibrium tariffs can explode (shedding some light ...
2013| Pio Baake, Steffen Huck
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DIW Discussion Papers 1341 / 2013
The Chinese growth miracle was based on exports and investment in recent years. While strong output growth has been maintained even during the financial crisis, the imbalances within the country increased. To return to a more sustainable path of development, policies are directed to improve the role of private consumption. However, the institutional framework is an impediment to the transformation, ...
2013| Christian Dreger, Tongsan Wang, Yanqun Zhang
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DIW Discussion Papers 1340 / 2013
It is a longstanding debate whether members of parliament (MPs) should be allowed to follow sideline jobs in addition to their mandate. Critics claim that politicians already face binding time constraints and that moonlighting might lead to a neglect of inner-parliamentary duties. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether politicians with more sideline jobs show less effort inside ...
2013| Felix Arnold
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DIW Discussion Papers 1339 / 2013
Using a panel of annual data for 20 countries we show that synchronized fiscal consolidation (stimulus) programmes in different countries make their business cycles more closely linked, especially in the case of fiscal adjustments lasting 2 or 3 years. We also find: (i) little evidence of decoupling when an inflation targeting regime is unilaterally adopted; (ii) an increase in business cycle synchronization ...
2013| Luca Agnello, Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Ricardo M. Sousa
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DIW Discussion Papers 1338 / 2013
US shale gas production is generally expected to continue its fast rise. However, a cautious evaluation is needed. Shale gas resource estimates are potentially overoptimistic and it is uncertain to which extent they can be produced economically. Moreover, the adverse environmental effects of ever more wells to be drilled may lead to a fall in public acceptance and a strengthening of regulation. The ...
2013| Philipp M. Richter
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DIW Discussion Papers 1337 / 2013
Multiplicative growth processes that are subject to random shocks often have a skewed distribution of outcomes. In a number of incentivized laboratory experiments we show that a large majority of participants either strongly underestimate skewness or ignore it completely. Participants misperceive the outcome distribution's spread to be far too narrow-band and they estimate the median to lie too close ...
2013| Ludwig Ensthaler, Olga Nottmeyer, Georg Weizsäcker, Christian Zankiewicz
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DIW Discussion Papers 1336 / 2013
Due to data limitations and the absence of testable, model-based predictions, theory and evidence on herd behavior are only loosely connected. This paper contributes towards closing this gap in the herding literature. We use numerical simulations of a herd model to derive new, theory-based predictions for aggregate herding intensity. Using high-frequency, investor-specific trading data we confirm the ...
2013| Christopher Boortz, Simon Jurkatis, Stephanie Kremer, Dieter Nautz
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DIW Discussion Papers 1335 / 2013
The paper deals with the competitive effects of price guarantees in a spatial duopoly where consumers can search for lower prices but have to incur hassle costs if they want to claim a price guarantee. It is shown that symmetric equilibria with and without price guarantees exist but price guarantees will have no effect on prices if search costs are low, hassle costs are high and the number of uninformed ...
2013| Pio Baake, Ulrich Schwalbe
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DIW Discussion Papers 1334 / 2013
The self-employed constitute a large proportion of the workforce in developing countries and the sector is growing. Different accounts exist as to the causes of this development, with pull factors such as high returns to capital contrasted with push factors such as barriers to more desirable salaried jobs. Using data from Ghana, we investigate the changing structure of earnings in self-employment relative ...
2013| Paolo Falco, Luke Haywood
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DIW Discussion Papers 1333 / 2013
This paper studies the impact of credit rating agency (CRA) announcements on the value of the Euro and the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish long-term sovereign bonds during the culmination of the Eurozone debt crisis in 2011-2012. The employed GARCH models show that CRA downgrade announcements negatively affected the value of the Euro currency and also increased its volatility. Downgrading ...
2013| Christopher F. Baum, Margarita Karpava, Dorothea Schäfer, Andreas Stephan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1332 / 2013
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. ...
2013| Ansgar Belke, Christian Dreger
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DIW Discussion Papers 1331 / 2013
We evaluate the impact of M&A activity on the growth of R&D spending and R&D intensity of 265 acquiring firms and 133 merger targets between 1990 and 2009. We use different matching techniques to construct separate control groups for acquirers and targets and use appropriate difference-in-difference estimation methods to single out the causal effect of mergers on R&D growth and intensity. We find that ...
2013| Florian Szücs