This paper studies the impact of household indebtedness on the transmission of monetary policy to consumption using the Chinese household-level survey data. We employ a panel smooth transition regression model to investigate the non-linear role of indebtedness. We find that housing-related indebtedness weakens the monetary policy transmission, and this effect is non-linear as there is a much larger counteraction of consumption in response to monetary policy shocks when household indebtedness increases from a low level rather than from a high level. Moreover, the weakened monetary policy transmission from indebtedness is stronger in urban households than in rural households. This can be explained by the investment good characteristic of real estate in China.

In most countries, childbirth has a negative impact on the labour market outcomes of mothers, especially for those with lower socioeconomic status. This column presents findings from a field experiment in Germany demonstrating that access to universal early childcare increases full-time employment and household income of mothers with lower socioeconomic status. To improve the labour market outcomes of these mothers, policymakers must provide easier access to early childcare and expand early childcare slots. 

Im vierten Quartal 2022 ging die Wirtschaftsleistung in Deutschland um 0,2% zurück. Insbesondere die privaten Haushalte erfüllten sich aufgrund der hohen Inflation weniger Konsumwünsche als noch im Quartal zuvor. Die Unterstützung seitens des Staates bei den hohen Energiepreisen federn die gestiegenen Lebenshaltungskosten der privaten Haushalte nur teilweise ab. Diese Kaufkraftverluste werden die Konsumenten wohl noch einige Zeit belasten. Die Unternehmen wurden hingegen bereits von den gesunkenen Beschaffungskosten auf den Weltmärkten etwas entlastet, und auch die Lieferkettenprobleme gingen zuletzt zurück. Allerdings trüben zahlreiche Krisenherde weltweit die Aussichten der deutschen Wirtschaft erneut ein. Zwar kommt es laut IWH-Flash-Indikator im ersten Quartal 2023 zu einer kurzen vorübergehenden Aufhellung, und die deutsche Wirtschaft legt um 0,5% zu. Jedoch schon im zweiten Quartal dürfte sich der Abwärtstrend mit einem Rückgang des Bruttoinlandsprodukts (BIP) um 0,3% fortsetzen (vgl. Abbildung 1).

This paper shows that local banking market conditions affect mortality rates in the United States. Exploiting the staggered relaxation of branching restrictions in the 1990s across states, we find that banking deregulation decreases local mortality rates. This effect is driven by a decrease in the mortality rate of black residents, implying a decrease in the black-white mortality gap. We further analyze the role of mortgage markets as a transmitter between banking deregulation and mortality and show that households' easier access to finance explains mortality dynamics. We do not find any evidence that our results can be explained by improved labor outcomes.

Real estate markets are pivotal to financial stability given their dual role as the underlying asset of crucial financial products in financial systems, such as mortgage loans and asset-backed securities, and the primary source of household wealth alike. As such, they also play traditionally a crucial role for the transmission of monetary policy. Imbalances and sudden corrections in real estate markets have been the root cause of many financial crises over the last decades. But whereas some national, often survey-based indicators of real estate prices are provided by central banks and statistical offices, a comprehensive collection of purchase prices, rents, and proxies for the liquidity of European real estate markets is lacking. The IWH European Real Estate Index (EREI) seeks to fill this void for residential property. This technical report describes the gathering and processing of sale and rental prices for properties in 18 European countries. We provide the general scrapeing step in the section before describing country-specific details for each country in separated sub-sections.