04.04.2019 • 10/2019
Service providers in Berlin give boost to East German economy – implications of the Joint Economic Forecast and of official data on the East German economy in 2018
In its spring report, the Joint Economic Forecast group states that the upturn in Germany came to an end in the second half of 2018, mainly because the manufacturing sector is weakening due to a slowing international economy and to problems in the automotive industry. Accordingly, in places such as Saxony (1.2%), Thuringia (0.5%), and Saxony-Anhalt (0.9%), where manufacturing plays a particularly important role, gross domestic product (GDP) grew less than in Germany as a whole (1.4%).
Oliver Holtemöller
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02.10.2019 • 21/2019
Thanks to robust domestic demand, the impact of the manufacturing sector on East Germany is less severe than in the west – Implications of the Autumn 2019 Joint Economic Forecast and official regional data for the eastern German economy
In its autumn report, the Joint Economic Forecast Project Group states that the German economy has cooled further in the current year. The manufacturing sector is the main reason for the economic weakness. This affects the economy in East Germany as well.
Oliver Holtemöller
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14.10.2020 • 22/2020
Economic slump in East Germany not as severe as in Germany as a whole ‒ Implications of the Joint Economic Forecast and new data for East Germany
The German economy started recovering quickly after the drastic pandemic-related slump in spring 2020. The recovery, however, loses much of its momentum in the second half of the year. The Joint Economic Forecast predicts that production levels seen before the crisis will not be reached again until the second half of 2021. In principle, the East German economy is following this pattern, although the economic slump is likely to be somewhat milder.
Oliver Holtemöller
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National Culture and Housing Credit
Chrysovalantis Gaganis, Iftekhar Hasan, Fotios Pasiouras
Journal of Empirical Finance,
March
2020
Abstract
Using a sample of around 30 countries over the period 2001–2015, this study provides evidence that deeply rooted cultural differences are significantly associated with the use of mortgage debt. More detailed, we find that power distance and uncertainty avoidance have a negative impact on the value of the total outstanding residential loans to GDP. This finding is robust across various specifications and the use of alternative measures of mortgage debt. In contrast, trust has a positive and robust impact on all the measures of mortgage debt. Other dimensions of national culture like long-term orientation, individualism, and indulgence, also appear to matter; however, their impact depends on the control variables and the employed measure of mortgage debt.
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Profit Shifting and Tax‐rate Uncertainty
Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Panagiotis I. Karavitis
Journal of Business Finance and Accounting,
5-6
2020
Abstract
Using firm‐level data for 1,084 parent firms in 24 countries and for 9,497 subsidiaries in 54 countries, we show that tax‐motivated profit shifting is larger among subsidiaries in countries that have stable corporate tax rates over time. Our findings further suggest that firms move away from transfer pricing and toward intragroup debt shifting that has lower adjustment costs. Our results are robust to several identification methods and respecifications, and they highlight the important role of tax‐rate uncertainty in the profit‐shifting decision while pointing to an adjustment away from more costly transfer pricing and toward debt shifting.
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Financial Incentives and Loan Officer Behavior: Multitasking and Allocation of Effort under an Incomplete Contract
Patrick Behr, Alejandro H. Drexler, Reint E. Gropp, Andre Guettler
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis,
No. 4,
2020
Abstract
We investigate the implications of providing loan officers with a nonlinear compensation structure that rewards loan volume and penalizes poor performance. Using a unique data set provided by a large international commercial bank, we examine the main activities that loan officers perform: loan prospecting, screening, and monitoring. We find that when loan officers are at risk of losing their bonuses, they increase prospecting and monitoring. We further show that loan officers adjust their behavior more toward the end of the month when bonus payments are approaching. These effects are more pronounced for loan officers with longer tenures at the bank.
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Comparing Financial Transparency between For-profit and Nonprofit Suppliers of Public Goods: Evidence from Microfinance
John W. Goodell, Abhinav Goyal, Iftekhar Hasan
Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money,
January
2020
Abstract
Previous research finds market financing is favored over relationship financing in environments of better governance, since the transaction costs to investors of vetting asymmetric information are thereby reduced. For industries supplying public goods, for-profits rely on market financing, while nonprofits rely on relationships with donors. This suggests that for-profits will be more inclined than nonprofits to improve financial transparency. We examine the impact of for-profit versus nonprofit status on the financial transparency of firms engaged with supplying public goods. There are relatively few industries that have large number of both for-profit and nonprofit firms across countries. However, the microfinance industry provides the opportunity of a large number of both for-profit and nonprofit firms in relatively equal numbers, across a wide array of countries. Consistent with our prediction, we find that financial transparency is positively associated with a for-profit status. Results will be of broad interest both to scholars interested in the roles of transparency and transaction costs on market versus relational financing; as well as to policy makers interested in the impact of for-profit on the supply of public goods, and on the microfinance industry in particular.
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Avoiding the Fall into the Loop: Isolating the Transmission of Bank-to-Sovereign Distress in the Euro Area
Stefan Eichler, Hannes Böhm
Journal of Financial Stability,
December
2020
Abstract
While the sovereign-bank loop literature has demonstrated the amplification between sovereign and bank risks in the Euro Area, its econometric identification is vulnerable to reverse causality and omitted variable biases. We address the loop's endogenous nature and isolate the direct bank-to-sovereign distress channel by exploiting the global, non-Eurozone related variation in banks’ stock prices. We instrument banking sector stock returns in the Eurozone with exposure-weighted stock market returns from non-Eurozone countries and take further precautions to remove Eurozone-related variation. We find that the transmission of instrumented bank distress to sovereign distress is around 50% smaller than the corresponding coefficient in the unadjusted OLS framework, confirming concerns on endogeneity. Despite the smaller relative magnitude, increasing instrumented bank distress is found to be an economically and statistically significant cause for rising sovereign fragility in the Eurozone.
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What Drives Innovation Output from Subsidized R&D Cooperation? — Project-level Evidence from Germany
Michael Schwartz, Michael Fritsch, Jutta Günther, François Peglow
Technovation,
No. 6,
2012
Abstract
Using a large dataset of 406 subsidized R&D cooperation projects, we provide detailed insights into the relationship between project characteristics and innovation output. Patent applications and publications are used as measures for the innovation output of an R&D project. We find that large-firm involvement is strongly positively related with the number of patent applications, but not with the number of publications. Conversely, university involvement has positive effects on projects’ innovation output in terms of the number of publications but not in terms of patent applications. In general, projects’ funding as measure of projects’ size is an important predictor of the innovation output of R&D cooperation projects. No significant effects are found for the number of partners as (an alternative) measure of projects’ size, for spatial proximity between cooperation partners, for the involvement of a public institute for applied research, and for prior cooperation experiences. We derive conclusions for the design of R&D cooperation support schemes.
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