Macroeconomics Department Publications

Global Economy: Slow Recovery Following Deep Recession: DIW Economic Outlook

The coronavirus pandemic caused a global market crash in the first half of 2020. Following a massive slump of around four percent in the first quarter, global GDP decreased in the second by five percent. Lower rates of new infections, together with far-reaching monetary and fiscal policy measures to dampen the economic impact of the pandemic, ensure that production and the trust of consumers and firms ...

Economic Outlook Better than Expected Despite Pandemic: Editorial

Bank Levies Can Make Bank Balance Sheets More Resilient, but High Corporate Tax Rates Dampen the Effect

Following the global financial crisis of 2008/2009, many European countries introduced bank levies to enable financial institutions to share in the costs of future banking crises via resolution and restructuring funds. Simultaneously, bank levies can set an incentive for banks to reduce their leverage, thereby achieving a more stable capital structure. Using information from banks’ balance sheets, ...

European Bank Deposit Insurance Could Cushion Impact of Corona-Induced Corporate Insolvencies

The European banking union has so far lacked its third pillar: a joint insurance fund for bank savings deposits. As the present study shows, this could be a major disadvantage in dealing with the economic impact of the corona pandemic. A scenario in which a wave of corporate insolvencies leads to loan and deposit losses reaching six percent over a year would over- whelm Germany’s national deposit insurance ...

German Economy Slowly Recovering Following a Deep Slump: DIW Economic Outlook

The coronavirus recession has left deep marks on the German economy and despite economic policy action, it is likely to heal only slowly. The partial easing of the lockdown and a gradual revival of global value chains are generating positive stimuli, but massive income losses will curb demand for some time to come. The German Federal Government was able to avoid the worst by implementing measures to ...

Coronavirus Pandemic Plunging Global Economy into a Serious Recession: DIW Economic Outlook

The consequences of the ongoing 2020 coronavirus pandemic are leaving deep marks on the global economy. In the first quarter of 2020, global production sank by 15.5 percent over the course of the worldwide lockdown. Since containment measures in many countries were mainly implemented during the second quarter of 2020, the slump in the first half of 2020 is likely to be even more severe overall. Due ...

Germany Hit Hard by the Global Recession as Uncertainty Weighs Heavy: Editorial

Identifying Effective Combinations of Economic Policy Measures for the Coronavirus Recession in Europe

As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, the European Central Bank as well as national governments in the euro area enacted or announced numerous economic policy measures to counteract the severe economic consequences of the resulting lockdowns. In this paper, the immediate effect of the announcements on government bond and stock markets are estimated in a panel study. The ...

Financial Market Participants Expect the Coronavirus Pandemic to Have Long-Lasting Economic Impact in Europe

Market participants are generally in agreement that the coronavirus pandemic will have a severe impact on the European economy, but it is difficult to predict the length and extent of the pandemic’s effects. However, using the yield curves of corporate bonds, we can reach some preliminary conclusions about the impact of the pandemic. The expectations of financial market participants are revealed in ...

Government Bonds: European Banks Still Display Strong Home Bias: Requiring Capital Backing Could Worsen Problem

The European sovereign debt crisis illustrated how the stability of the entire financial system suffers when banks and sovereigns become too intertwined. However, there has been seemingly little success in reducing the bank-sovereign nexus in the decade since the crisis. As this Weekly Report shows, home bias remains strong and many European banks are still primarily purchasing domestic government ...