We study the interaction of expansionary rate-based monetary policy and quantitative easing, despite their concurrent implementation, by exploiting heterogeneous banks and the introduction of negative monetary-policy rates in a fragmented euro area. Quantitative easing increases credit supply less, translating into weaker employment growth, when banks’ funding costs do not decrease. Using administrative data from Germany, we uncover that among banks selling their securities, central-bank reserves remain disproportionately with high-deposit banks that are constrained due to sticky customer deposits at the zero lower bound. Affected German banks lend relatively less to firms while increasing their interbank exposure in the euro area.

We revisit the employer size wage effect (ESWE) – arguably the most basic and influential departure from the law of one price for labor. Our main result is that this canonical fact disappears completely across establishments within the same firm, even though they operate in different local labor markets. We uncover and dissect this fact by including a firm fixed effect in otherwise standard cross-sectional regressions of wages on establishment size. We implement this demanding specification in population-wide triple-linked firm-establishment-employee data in Germany. This result is new in the ESWE literature (for which our paper also provides the first systematic meta-analysis). This wage-size decoupling is hard to square with the view that employment is determined along a finitely elastic employerspecific labor supply curve – i.e., employers pay exactly the minimum needed for the quantity of labor, but no more – the foundation of the monopsony view. By contrast, large multi-establishment firms (MEF) appear to hire off their labor supply curves (or those curves are very elastic), pay wage premia above the monopsonistic minimum, and leave excess labor supply. We find some evidence for a reemergence of the ESWE within low-premium MEFs. Overall, at least for the 25% of German employment in large firms for which the ESWE disappears, wage setting and employment determination may be better accounted for by alternative models, namely accommodating above-market-clearing wage premia and rationing of labor supply, such as efficiency wage theories.

In this study, establishment-level employment effects of investment grants in Germany are estimated. In addition to the quantitative effects, I provide empirical evidence of funding effects on different aspects of employment quality (earnings, qualifications, and job security) for the period 2004 to 2020. The database combines project-level treatment data, establishment-level information on firm characteristics and employee structure, and regional information at the district level. For the estimations, I combine the difference-in-differences approach of Callaway and Sant’Anna (J Econom 2252: 200–230, 2021) with ties matching at the cohort level. The estimations yield positive effects on the number of employees, but point to contradicting effects of investment grants on different aspects of employment quality.

Die deutsche Wirtschaft hat im ersten Quartal 2026 um 0,3% zugelegt, nach 0,2% im Schlussquartal 2025. Getragen wurde dieser Zuwachs vor allem von staatlichen und privaten Konsumausgaben sowie von den Exporten. Im Verlauf des Quartals hat sich die wirtschaftliche Stimmung jedoch deutlich eingetrübt. Der Iran‑Konflikt und die stark gestiegenen Rohöl‑ und LNG‑Preise, die aus den zeitweiligen Einschränkungen der Transportwege durch die Straße von Hormus sowie Schäden an der Energieinfrastruktur in den Golfstaaten resultieren, belasten die Weltwirtschaft, stören Lieferketten und wirken dämpfend auf die deutsche Konjunktur. Die aktuellen Indikatoren sprechen daher für eine vorübergehende Abschwächung (vgl. Abbildung 1). Nach dem IWH‑Flash‑Indikator dürfte das Bruttoinlandsprodukt im zweiten Quartal 2026 nur leicht um 0,1% zulegen, bevor im dritten Quartal wieder eine etwas kräftigere Zunahme um 0,3% zu erwarten ist.

Many countries and regions remain below the level of economic activity of the world’s most advanced economies. Some countries form growth clubs, some are stuck in the middle-income trap, and some stay on a very low level of economic activity. Although this situation is well documented on the country level, there is less evidence at the sub-national level within countries. We estimate county-level capital stocks and price indices and provide a comprehensive county-level data set for Germany. We find no evidence of convergence across all counties even if we condition on important drivers of long-term growth such as physical and human capital accumulation. Instead, we identify five convergence clubs, using endogenous clustering. We analyze differences in growth paths and describe the identified clusters based on variations in contributions of capital, labor, and total factor productivity to economic growth. Additionally, we examine the role of migration for regional development and find that net migration has in particular contributed to growth in richer regions.

Weltweit höhere Energiepreise infolge des neuen Golfkriegs verschlechtern die Aussichten für die deutsche Konjunktur, auch wenn Mehrausgaben der öffentlichen Hand die gesamtwirtschaftliche Expansion in diesem und im kommenden Jahr stützen werden. Die Produktion dürfte im Jahr 2026 um 0,7% und im Jahr darauf um 1% zunehmen. Ähnliche Expansionsraten sind auch für Ostdeutschland zu erwarten.

Die deutsche Wirtschaft legte im vierten Quartal 2025 um 0,3% zu, nachdem sie in den beiden Quartalen zuvor noch geschrumpft war. Vor allem zum Ende des Jahres 2025 stiegen die privaten und staatlichen Konsumausgaben. Das Bruttoinlandsprodukt (BIP) hat damit im Jahr 2025 insgesamt um 0,2% zugenommen. Dabei dürften vor allem die Konsumausgaben die fehlenden Wachstumsimpulse des Außenhandels kompensiert haben. Die jüngsten Indikatoren deuten auf eine leichte konjunkturelle Belebung hin (vgl. Abbildung 1). Laut IWH-Flash-Indikator dürfte das Bruttoinlandsprodukt (BIP) im ersten Quartal 2026 um 0,3% und im zweiten Quartal 2026 um 0,2% steigen.