We study the impact of higher capital requirements on banks’ balance sheets and their transmission to the real economy. The 2011 EBA capital exercise is an almost ideal quasi-natural experiment to identify this impact with a difference-in-differences matching estimator. We find that treated banks increase their capital ratios by reducing their risk-weighted assets, not by raising their levels of equity, consistent with debt overhang. Banks reduce lending to corporate and retail customers, resulting in lower asset, investment, and sales growth for firms obtaining a larger share of their bank credit from the treated banks.

This study analyses the performance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook output forecasts for the world and for both the advanced economies and the emerging and developing economies. With a focus on the forecast for the current year and the next year, we examine the durability of IMF forecasts, looking at how much time has to pass so that IMF forecasts can be improved by using leading indicators with monthly updates. Using a real-time data set for GDP and for indicators, we find that some simple single-indicator forecasts on the basis of data that are available at higher frequency can significantly outperform the IMF forecasts as soon as the publication of the IMF’s Outlook is only a few months old. In particular, there is an obvious gain using leading indicators from January to March for the forecast of the current year.

This paper investigates the intra-regional development patterns in East Germany with particular reference to the manufacturing sector. When East Germany’s economy was ruled by the central planning regime, the share of industrial workforce in total employment was the greatest in entire Europe. It exceeded the respective value in the Soviet Union at that time. When the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy occurred, the East German manufacturing sector faced the greatest challenges.

Understanding how banks react to unexpected events has become a very important economic and social question, especially since the financial crisis (Ivashina and Scharfstein, 2010; Puri et al., 2011). Whereas previous financial crises had largely stayed in the realm of finance, or very limited areas of the economy, the financial crisis of 2007-2008 demonstrated that unexpected financial shocks can have severe implications for the real economy in general, impacting the lives of a large cross-section of the population, for example through general reductions in employment (Chodorow- Reich, 2014; Popov and Rocholl, 2017). This new realization has led to an extensive literature on how banks react to unexpected events, especially if and how they transfer such shocks to firms and households. As a result, understanding exactly how shocks are transferred not only between banks (Popov and Udell, 2012; Schnabl, 2012), but also between banks and firms has become a crucial aspect of financial research (Peek and Rosengren, 2000; Gan, 2007; Ongena et al., 2015; Acharya et al., 2018; Gropp et al., 2018; Huber, 2018). It has returned into focus the idea that a functioning connection between banks and firms constitutes a crucial part of a well-functioning economy. This thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of how this bank-firm relationship functions and what pitfalls it might entail.

• The cyclical upswing of the world economy comes to an end, since expansionary policies in the US are expected to peter out in 2019, and the protectionist course of the US government clouds the perspectives for world trade. • However, if a major trade conflict can be avoided, chances are good that world production growth will be close to the long-run average of a bit more than 3%, with trade expanding at a similar pace. • Slowing exports, in particular to China, can partly explain the setback, while domestic conditions still appear favourable: firms continued hiring, albeit by less than before, tight labour markets in many member countries have caused wages to rise more quickly, and house prices continue to increase markedly. • Since a trend to higher inflationary dynamics is still not detectable, the ECB is likely to either keep key interest rates unchanged in 2019 or raise them very carefully at the end of the year. • All in all, we expect the euro area growth rate to come down from 1.9% in 2018 to 1.5% in 2019 and 1.8% in 2020, and inflation to slightly slow down from 1.8% in 2018 to 1.6% in 2019 and 1.5% in 2020.

Im zweiten Halbjahr 2018 ist der Aufschwung der deutschen Wirtschaft ins Stocken geraten. Dabei geht der leichte Rückgang des Bruttoinlandsprodukts im dritten Quartal vor allem auf Probleme der Automobilbranche zurück: Viele Fahrzeugtypen waren nicht lieferbar, weil die Zertifizierung nach dem neuen Abgas-Prüfverfahren fehlte. Allerdings schwächt sich das Auslandsgeschäft schon seit Beginn des Jahres ab, denn die internationale Konjunktur hat den hohen Schwung des Jahres 2017 nicht halten können, vor allem wegen der hohen politischen Unsicherheiten, welche die Handelskonflikte, der nahende Brexit und der Konflikt um den italienischen Staatshaushalt mit sich bringen.

Binnenwirtschaftlich dürfte sich aber der Aufschwung in Deutschland im Lauf des Jahres kaum verlangsamt haben. Ein Hauptgrund dafür sind die weiter sehr günstigen Finanzierungsbedingungen. Sie werden aufgrund der expansiven Geldpolitik der EZB auch im Jahr 2019 günstig bleiben. Allerdings ist zu erwarten, dass das weniger freundliche außenwirtschaftliche Umfeld nicht nur die Exporte dämpft, sondern bald auch auf Investitionsentscheidungen und Personalpolitik der Unternehmen durchschlagen wird; zunächst wohl im Verarbeitenden Gewerbe, dann auch bei den Dienstleistern. Weiter bremsend wirkt zugleich der Fachkräftemangel am Bau, aber auch in anderen Branchen. Alles in allem ist damit zu rechnen, dass die Produktion im Jahr 2019 nur noch in etwa so stark zulegt wie die Produktionskapazitäten: Das Bruttoinlandsprodukt dürfte im Jahr 2018 um 1,5% und im Jahr 2019 um 1,4% steigen. Der gesamtstaatliche Haushaltsüberschuss beträgt im Jahr 2018 60 Mrd. Euro. Im Jahr 2019 verringert er sich auf 42 Mrd. Euro. Die ostdeutsche Wirtschaft dürfte in den Jahren 2018 und 2019 in etwa so schnell expandieren wie die gesamtdeutsche.

Financial markets are eager for any signal of monetary policy from the People’s Bank of China (PBC). The importance of effective monetary policy communication will only increase as China continues to liberalize its financial system and open its economy. This paper discusses the country’s unique institutional setup and empirically analyzes the impact on financial markets of the PBC’s main communication channels, including a novel communication channel. The results suggest that there has been significant progress but that PBC communication is still evolving toward the level of other major economies. The paper recommends medium-term policy reforms and reforms that can be adopted quickly.

We introduce a novel currency risk measure based on American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). Using an augmented ADR pricing model, we exploit investors’ exposure to potential devaluation losses to derive an indicator of currency risk. Using weekly data for a sample of 807 ADRs located in 21 emerging markets over the 1994–2014 period, we find that a deterioration in the fiscal balance and higher inflation increase currency risk. Interaction models reveal that the fiscal balance and inflation drive the determination of currency risk for countries with poor sovereign rating, low foreign reserves, low capital account openness and managed float regimes.

• Signs of a slowing world economy are piling up: Since the beginning of the year purchasing manager indices have been declining globally, in summer higher US interest rates led investors to withdraw capital from emerging markets, and as a consequence, capital costs rose and currencies depreciated in many emerging markets economies. In October stock prices decreased markedly worldwide including the US, despite the strong upswing in this country. • As a consequence of the turmoil on financial markets, monetary conditions in many emerging economies are no longer favorable. What ultimately counts for the prospects of the global economy, is, however, the performance of the US, the Euro area, China and Japan. The upswing in the US appears stable enough to continue well into 2019. While at present the rest of the group appears to lose momentum, there is a good chance that production in each of these economies will still expand at rates that are close to their potential growth. Further protectionist rounds are the most important risk to this scenario. • In the first half of the current year the euro area economy expanded at a markedly slower rate than in 2017, about 0.4% per quarter, but still substantial. Rising risk premia on Italian assets will probably force banks in this large country to tighten credit conditions, and a slowing world trade will dent export growth. All in all, we expect GDP growth in the euro area to go down from 2.4% in 2017 to 2.0% in 2018 and to 1.7% in 2019. • Employment continues to expand and vacancy rates are at present higher than in 2017. As a consequence, wages rise more quickly: nominal compensations per employee started accelerating early in 2017, and negotiated wages followed at the beginning of 2018. Wage inflation of slightly below 2.5% and healthy growth in employment raise real labor incomes markedly. • Our forecasts are based on the assumption that rating agencies will continue as-signing investment grade to the Italian government debt, and that the Italian government and the European Commission will find a compromise about the draft budget of the country in the coming weeks. Another assumption is that the UK will not exit the EU in an unorderly way in March 2019.

In complex systems, statistical dependencies between individual components are often considered one of the key mechanisms which drive the system dynamics observed on a macroscopic level. In this paper, we study cross-sectional time-lagged dependencies in financial markets, quantified by nonparametric measures from information theory, and estimate directed temporal dependency networks in financial markets. We examine the emergence of strongly connected feedback components in the estimated networks, and hypothesize that the existence of information feedback in financial networks induces strong spatiotemporal spillover effects and thus indicates systemic risk. We obtain empirical results by applying our methodology on stock market and real estate data, and demonstrate that the estimated networks exhibit strongly connected components around periods of high volatility in the markets. To further study this phenomenon, we construct a systemic risk indicator based on the proposed approach, and show that it can be used to predict future market distress. Results from both the stock market and real estate data suggest that our approach can be useful in obtaining early-warning signals for crashes in financial markets.