The interview with Dr. Ferdinand Fichtner is published in DIW Economic Bulletin 11/2015. It is available for Download as pdf-document More issues of DIW Economic Bulletin
The German economy continues to recover, and will grow by 2.2 percent in 2015 and by 1.9 percent in 2016. The unemployment rate will further decline, to 6.4 percent this year and 6.1percent in 2016. Inflation, which averages 0.5 percent this year, will be substantially dampened by the slump in oil prices; in 2016 as well, inflation will remain low, at 1.2 percent. The global economy continues in its ...
We analyzed 35,000 statements from 14,000 SOEP members that decided to share their worries beyond ticking off preset items by using the unstructured response format. Making free text accessible for quantitative analysis imposes specific challenges that are partly unique to the language and peculiarities of the respective text format. In our talk, we will outline the required processing steps for...
A Welfare Analysis of Fragmented Liquidity Markets
The integration of emerging markets into the global economy is heavily promoted by foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. Within the factors driving the location of FDI, regional trade agreements (RTAs) become increasingly relevant for emerging markets. We explore the impact of South-South trade agreements on FDI by dynamic panel models. The MENA countries are compared to the better performing regions ...
In this paper, I estimate the impact of the German child-care pension benefit (Kindererziehungszeiten) on household savings, exploiting the pension reform 1992 as a natural experiment based on the Income and Expenditure Survey (EVS). The child-care pension benefits are designed as a compensation for employment interruptions due to child-birth and they increase a mother’s pension wealth. In...
Does the structure of banking markets affect macroeconomic volatility and, if yes, is this link different in low-income countries? In this paper, we explore the channels through which the structure of banking markets affects macroeconomic volatility. Our research has three main findings. First, we study whether idiosyncratic volatility at the bank level can impact aggregate volatility. We find weak ...
Die Kosten der geplanten unterirdisch verlegten Hochspannungs-Gleichstrom-Übertragungsleitung (HGÜ) zwischen Spanien und Frankreich übersteigen die Investitionskosten einer vergleichbaren Wechselstrom-Freileitung. Die Frage stellt sich, ob die Mehrkosten mit ausreichendem Zusatznutzen für die Gesellschaft, wie zum Beispiel erhöhter Versorgungssicherheit, zu rechtfertigen sind. Aus diesem Grund wurden ...
