Volatility, Growth and Financial Crises

This research group analyses the build-up of financial vulnerabilities and real consequences of financial crises. Different policy shocks and the causal reaction of macroeconomic aggregates are identified. Early-warning models describe the cyclical nature of financial vulnerabilities.

IWH Data Project: Financial Stability Indicators in Europe

Research Cluster
Financial Resilience and Regulation

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Professor Dr Gregor von Schweinitz
Professor Dr Gregor von Schweinitz
- Department Macroeconomics
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EXTERNAL FUNDING

01.2022 ‐ 12.2023

Sovereign Risk Shocks

Professor Dr Gregor von Schweinitz

05.2017 ‐ 09.2019

Early Warning Models for Systemic Banking Crises: The Effect of Model and Estimation Uncertainty

Professor Dr Gregor von Schweinitz

01.2018 ‐ 12.2018

International Monetary Policy Transmission

Professor Dr Gregor von Schweinitz

Refereed Publications

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Working Papers

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What Explains International Interest Rate Co-Movement?

Annika Camehl Gregor von Schweinitz

in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 3, 2023

Abstract

We show that global supply and demand shocks are important drivers of interest rate co-movement across seven advanced economies. Beyond that, local structural shocks transmit internationally via aggregate demand channels, and central banks react predominantly to domestic macroeconomic developments: unexpected monetary policy tightening decreases most foreign interest rates, while expansionary local supply and demand shocks increase them. To disentangle determinants of international interest rate co-movement, we use a Bayesian structural panel vector autoregressive model accounting for latent global supply and demand shocks. We identify country-specific structural shocks via informative prior distributions based on a standard theoretical multi-country open economy model.

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The Impact of Active Aggregate Demand on Utilisation-adjusted TFP

Konstantin Gantert

in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 9, 2022

Abstract

Non-clearing goods markets are an important driver of capacity utilisation and total factor productivity (TFP). The trade-off between goods prices and household search effort is central to goods market matching and therefore drives TFP over the business cycle. In this paper, I develop a New-Keynesian DSGE model with capital utilisation, worker effort, and expand it with<i> goods market search-and-matching (SaM)</i> to model non-clearing goods markets. I conduct a horse-race between the different capacity utilisation channels using Bayesian estimation and capacity utilisation survey data. Models that include goods market SaM improve the data fit, while the capital utilisation and worker effort channels are rendered less important compared to the literature. It follows that TFP fluctuations increase for demand and goods market mismatch shocks, while they decrease for technology shocks. This pattern increases as goods market frictions increase and as prices become stickier. The paper shows the importance of non-clearing goods markets in explaining the difference between technology and TFP over the business cycle.

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The Effects of Sovereign Risk: A High Frequency Identification Based on News Ticker Data

Ruben Staffa

in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 8, 2022

Abstract

This paper uses novel news ticker data to evaluate the effect of sovereign risk on economic and financial outcomes. The use of intraday news enables me to derive policy events and respective timestamps that potentially alter investors’ beliefs about a sovereign’s willingness to service its debt and thereby sovereign risk. Following the high frequency identification literature, in the tradition of Kuttner (2001) and Guerkaynak et al. (2005), associated variation in sovereign risk is then obtained by capturing bond price movements within narrowly defined time windows around the event time. I conduct the outlined identification for Italy since its large bond market and its frequent coverage in the news render it a suitable candidate country. Using the identified shocks in an instrumental variable local projection setting yields a strong instrument and robust results in line with theoretical predictions. I document a dampening effect of sovereign risk on output. Also, borrowing costs for the private sector increase and inflation rises in response to higher sovereign risk.

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On the International Dissemination of Technology News Shocks

João Carlos Claudio Gregor von Schweinitz

in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 25, 2020

Abstract

This paper investigates the propagation of technology news shocks within and across industrialised economies. We construct quarterly utilisation-adjusted total factor productivity (TFP) for thirteen OECD countries. Based on country-specific structural vector autoregressions (VARs), we document that (i) the identified technology news shocks induce a quite homogeneous response pattern of key macroeconomic variables in each country; and (ii) the identified technology news shock processes display a significant degree of correlation across several countries. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that the US are only one of many different sources of technological innovations diffusing across advanced economies. Technology news propagate through the endogenous reaction of monetary policy and via trade-related variables. That is, our results imply that financial markets and trade are key channels for the dissemination of technology.

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Sovereign Stress, Banking Stress, and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism in the Euro Area

Oliver Holtemöller Jan-Christopher Scherer

in: IWH Discussion Papers, No. 3, 2018

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate to what extent sovereign stress and banking stress have contributed to the increase in the level and in the heterogeneity of nonfinancial firms’ refinancing costs in the Euro area during the European debt crisis and how they did affect the monetary transmission mechanism. We identify the increasing effect of government bond yield spreads (sovereign stress) and the share of non-performing loans (banking stress) on firms’ financing costs using an instrumental-variable approach. Moreover, we estimate both sources of stress to have significantly impaired the monetary transmission mechanism during the European debt crisis.

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