The global economy is stalling. Global production increased by only 3.3 percent last year—the lowest growth rate since the financial crisis—and is expected to rise by only 3.3 percent in 2016 as well, which is lower than originally predicted. The reason for the sluggish growth lies primarily in the changes taking place in the emerging countries: the Chinese economy continues to lose momentum, and low ...
This paper uses a structural VAR model to study the effect of monetary policy on the delinquency rate of business loans and consumer credit. The VAR is identified using at the same time several external instruments, which cover different approaches from the literature. Delinquency rates, defined as the rate of loans whose repayment is overdue for more than a month relative to total loans, are found ...
DIW Berlin’s forecast: GDP to rise by 1.6 percent in 2016 – robust labor market, wage increases, and refugee expenditure fueling consumption – investment and global economy inhibiting growth According to the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), the German economy is expected to grow by 1.6 percent this year, despite a gloomy global economy. This prognosis is similar ...
Mr. Junker, what kind of growth should we expect for the German economy? The German economy is expected to grow by 1.6 percent this year, which is a bit weaker than we had forecasted this past winter. This slight downward revision is primarily due to the fact that industry experienced a weak phase over the past six months, especially in the final quarter of 2015. The major reason for this was ...
This paper empirically examines the role of diversification in export markets on firm-level R&D activities taking account of the potential endogeneity in this relationship. We show that geographical sales diversification across different regions of the world induces UK firms to increase their R&D expenditures, as firms must innovate and develop new products to maintain a competitive edge over their ...
This paper analyses the differences in the efficiency of using subsidies for franchised regional rail services between the federal states in Germany, and provides evidence on the impact of procurement strategies and contractual design on the efficient use of funds. The analysis is based on a 15-year panel data set at the level of the federal states and employs a two-stage efficiency analysis, including ...
Revenue cap regulation is often combined with systematic benchmarking to reveal the managerial inefficiencies when regulating natural monopolies. One example is the European energy sector, where benchmarking methods are based on actual cost data, which are influenced by managerial inefficiency as well as operational heterogeneity. This paper demonstrates how a conditional nonparametric method, which ...
