12.03.2024 • 8/2024
Risk in the banking sector: four out of ten top supervisors come from the financial industry
Europe's banks realise excess returns on the stock market when their alumni join the boards of national supervisory authorities. A study by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) shows that this happens more frequently than previously recognised. The findings indicate a risk to financial stability and call for a more merit-based, transparent appointment of senior regulators.
Michael Koetter
Read press release
Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index: A New Employment Series for the US, Canada, and the UK
Ufuk Akcigit, Raman Chhina, Seyit Cilasun, Javier Miranda, Eren Ocakverdi, Nicolas Serrano-Velarde
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 9,
2023
Abstract
Small and young businesses are essential for job creation, innovation, and economic growth. Even most of the superstar firms start their business life small and then grow over time. Small firms have less internal resources, which makes them more fragile and sensitive to macroeconomic conditions. This suggests the need for frequent and real-time monitoring of the small business sector’s health. Previously this was difficult due to a lack of appropriate data. This paper fills this important gap by developing a new Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index that focuses on the smallest of small businesses with at most 9 workers in the US and the UK and at most 19 workers in Canada. The Index aggregates a sample of anonymous Quick- Books Online Payroll subscriber data (QBO Payroll sample) from 333,000 businesses in the US, 66,000 in Canada, and 25,000 in the UK. After comparing the QBO Payroll sample data to the official statistics, we remove the seasonal components and use a Flexible Least Squares method to calibrate the QBO Payroll sample data against official statistics. Finally, we use the estimated model and the QBO Payroll sample data to generate a near real-time index of economic activity. We show that the estimated model performs well both in-sample and out-of-sample. Additionally, we use this analysis for different regions and industries. Keywords:
Read article
Homepage
Headwinds from Germany and abroad: institutes revise forecast significantly downwards According to Germany’s five...
See page
Productivity
Productivity: More with Less by Better Available resources are scarce. To sustain our...
See page
IWH Forecasting Dashboard
IWH Forecasting Dashboard The objective of the IWH Forecasting Dashboard ...
See page
Department Profiles
Research Profiles of the IWH Departments All doctoral students are allocated to one...
See page
IWH European Real Estate Index
IWH European Real Estate Index The IWH European Real Estate Database is a new data...
See page
Macro Data Download
Macro Data Download On this page, you will find long time series of macroeconomic...
See page
Financial Stability
Financial Systems: The Anatomy of the Market Economy How the financial system is...
See page
East Germany
The Nasty Gap 30 years after unification: Why East Germany is still 20% poorer than the...
See page