13.04.2022 • 8/2022
Gemeinschaftsdiagnose Frühjahr 2022: Von der Pandemie zur Energiekrise – Wirtschaft und Politik im Dauerstress
Die deutsche Wirtschaft steuert durch schwieriges Fahrwasser und durchläuft die höchsten Inflationsraten seit Jahrzehnten. In ihrem Frühjahrsgutachten revidieren die führenden Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute ihren Ausblick für dieses Jahr deutlich nach unten. Die Erholung von der Corona-Krise wird infolge des Kriegs in der Ukraine gedämpft, behält aber die Oberhand. Die Institute erwarten für 2022 und 2023 eine Zunahme des Bruttoinlandsprodukts um 2,7% bzw. 3,1%. Bei einer sofortigen Unterbrechung der russischen Gaslieferungen stünden hierzulande in beiden Jahren insgesamt 220 Mrd. Euro an Wirtschaftsleistung im Feuer.
Oliver Holtemöller
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15.04.2021 • 11/2021
Gemeinschaftsdiagnose Frühjahr 2021: Pandemie verzögert Aufschwung – Demografie bremst Wachstum
In ihrem Frühjahrsgutachten prognostizieren die führenden Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute einen Anstieg des Bruttoinlandsproduktes um 3,7% im laufenden Jahr und um 3,9% im Jahr 2022. Der erneute Shutdown verzögert die wirtschaftliche Erholung, aber sobald die Infektionsgefahren vor allem durch das Impfen gebannt sein werden, wird eine kräftige Erholung einsetzen. Etwa zu Beginn des kommenden Jahres dürfte die Wirtschaft zur Normalauslastung zurückkehren.
Oliver Holtemöller
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Why Are Households Saving so much During the Corona Recession?
Reint E. Gropp, William McShane
IWH Policy Notes,
Nr. 1,
2021
Abstract
Savings rates among European households have reached record levels during the Corona recession. We investigate three possible explanations for the increase in household savings: precautionary motivations induced by increased economic uncertainty, reduced consumption opportunities due to lockdown measures, and Ricardian Equivalence, i.e. increases in the expected future tax-burden of households driven by increases in government debt. To test these explanations, we compile a monthly panel of euro area countries from January 2019 to August 2020. Our findings indicate that the chief driver of the increase in household savings is supply: As governments restrict households’ opportunities to spend, households spend less. We estimate that going from no lockdown measures to that of Italy’s in March, would have resulted in the growth of Germany’s deposit to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio being 0.6 percentage points higher each month. This would be equivalent to the volume of deposits increasing by roughly 14.3 billion euros or 348 euros per house monthly. Demand effects, driven by either fears of unemployment or fear of infection from COVID-19, appear to only have a weak impact on household savings, whereas changes in government debt are unrelated or even negatively related to savings rates. The analysis suggests that there is some pent-up demand for consumption that may unravel after lockdown measures are abolished and may result in a significant increase in consumption in the late spring/early summer 2021.
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14.12.2020 • 25/2020
Deutsche Lebensversicherer investieren nicht ausreichend in Start-ups
Die deutschen Lebensversicherer legen ihr Kapital bislang zu wenig in Aktien an und hemmen so die wirtschaftliche Dynamik. Eine Studie des Leibniz-Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH) legt nahe, dass der Gründerszene Risikokapital fehlt, um erfolgreiche Start-ups zu finanzieren. Grund dafür ist das Anlageverhalten potenzieller Investoren. IWH-Präsident Reint Gropp fordert Reformen, die die Finanzierung innovativer Ideen fördern.
Reint E. Gropp
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06.07.2020 • 13/2020
IWH warnt vor neuer Bankenkrise
Die Corona-Rezession könnte das Aus für dutzende Banken bundesweit bedeuten – selbst wenn Deutschland die Wirtschaftskrise glimpflich übersteht. Gefährdet sind vor allem viele Sparkassen und Genossenschaftsbanken, zeigt eine Analyse des Leibniz-Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH). In den Bilanzen der betroffenen Geldinstitute stehen Kredite im dreistelligen Milliardenbereich. IWH-Präsident Gropp warnt vor einer möglichen hohen Zusatzlast für die ohnehin geschwächte Realwirtschaft.
Reint E. Gropp
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The Corona Recession and Bank Stress in Germany
Reint E. Gropp, Michael Koetter, William McShane
IWH Online,
Nr. 4,
2020
Abstract
We conduct stress tests for a large sample of German banks across different recoveries from the Corona recession. We find that, depending on how quickly the economy recovers, between 6% to 28% of banks could become distressed from defaulting corporate borrowers alone. Many of these banks are likely to require regulatory intervention or may even fail. Even in our most optimistic scenario, bank capital ratios decline by nearly 24%. The sum of total loans held by distressed banks could plausibly range from 127 to 624 billion Euros and it may take years before the full extent of this stress is observable. Hence, the current recession could result in an acute contraction in lending to the real economy, thereby worsening the current recession , decelerating the recovery, or perhaps even causing a “double dip” recession. Additionally, we show that the corporate portfolio of savings and cooperative banks is more than five times as exposed to small firms as that of commercial banks and Landesbanken. The preliminary evidence indicates small firms are particularly exposed to the current crisis, which implies that cooperative and savings banks are at especially high risk of becoming distressed. Given that the financial difficulties may seriously impair the recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, the pressure to bail out large parts of the banking system will be strong. Recent research suggests that the long run benefits of largely resisting these pressures may be high and could result in a more efficient economy.
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Transmitting Fiscal Covid-19 Counterstrikes Effectively: Mind the Banks!
Reint E. Gropp, Michael Koetter, William McShane
IWH Online,
Nr. 2,
2020
Abstract
The German government launched an unprecedented range of support programmes to mitigate the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic for employees, self-employed, and firms. Fiscal transfers and guarantees amount to approximately €1.2 billion by now and are supplemented by similarly impressive measures taken at the European level. We argue in this note that the pandemic poses, however, also important challenges to financial stability in general and bank resilience in particular. A stable banking system is, in turn, crucial to ensure that support measures are transmitted to the real economy and that credit markets function seamlessly. Our analysis shows that banks are exposed rather differently to deteriorated business outlooks due to marked differences in their lending specialisation to different economic sectors. Moreover, a number of the banks that were hit hardest by bleak growth prospects of their borrowers were already relatively thinly capitalised at the outset of the pandemic. This coincidence can impair the ability and willingness of selected banks to continue lending to their mostly small and medium sized entrepreneurial customers. Therefore, ensuring financial stability is an important pre-requisite to also ensure the effectiveness of fiscal support measures. We estimate that contracting business prospects during the first quarter of 2020 could lead to an additional volume of non-performing loans (NPL) among the 40 most stressed banks ‒ mostly small, regional relationship lenders ‒ on the order of around €200 million. Given an initial stock of NPL of €650 million, this estimate thus suggests a potential level of NPL at year-end of €1.45 billion for this fairly small group of banks already. We further show that 17 regional banking markets are particularly exposed to an undesirable coincidence of starkly deteriorating borrower prospects and weakly capitalised local banks. Since these regions are home to around 6.8% of total employment in Germany, we argue that ensuring financial stability in the form of healthy bank balance sheets should be an important element of the policy strategy to contain the adverse real economic effects of the pandemic.
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02.10.2019 • 20/2019
Gemeinschaftsdiagnose Herbst 2019: Konjunktur kühlt weiter ab – Industrie in der Rezession
Berlin, 2. Oktober 2019 – Die führenden deutschen Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute haben ihre Konjunkturprognose für Deutschland deutlich nach unten korrigiert. Waren sie im Frühjahr noch von einer Zunahme des Bruttoinlandsprodukts von 0,8% im Jahr 2019 ausgegangen, erwarten sie nun nur noch 0,5%. Gründe für die schwache Entwicklung sind die nachlassende weltweite Nachfrage nach Investitionsgütern, auf deren Export die deutsche Wirtschaft spezialisiert ist, politische Unsicherheit und strukturelle Veränderungen in der Automobilindustrie. Die Finanzpolitik stützt hingegen die gesamtwirtschaftliche Expansion. Für das kommende Jahr senken die Konjunkturforscher ebenfalls ihre Prognose auf 1,1% nach noch 1,8% im Frühjahr.
Oliver Holtemöller
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Power Generation and Structural Change: Quantifying
Economic Effects of the Coal Phase-out in Germany
Christoph Schult, Katja Heinisch, Oliver Holtemöller
Abstract
In the fight against global warming, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a major objective. In particular, a decrease in electricity generation by coal could contribute to reducing CO2 emissions. We study potential economic consequences of a coal phase-out in Germany, using a multi-region dynamic general equilibrium model. Four regional phase-out scenarios before the end of 2040 are simulated. We find that the worst case phase-out scenario would lead to an increase in the aggregate unemployment rate by about 0.13 [0.09 minimum; 0.18 maximum] percentage points from 2020 to 2040. The effect on regional unemployment rates varies between 0.18 [0.13; 0.22] and 1.07 [1.00; 1.13] percentage points in the lignite regions. A faster coal phase-out can lead to a faster recovery. The coal phase-out leads to migration from German lignite regions to German non-lignite regions and reduces the labour force in the lignite regions by 10,100 [6,300; 12,300] people by 2040. A coal phase-out until 2035 is not worse in terms of welfare, consumption and employment compared to a coal-exit until 2040
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Enforcement of Banking Regulation and the Cost of Borrowing
Yota D. Deli, Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Liuling Liu
Journal of Banking and Finance,
April
2019
Abstract
We show that borrowing firms benefit substantially from important enforcement actions issued on U.S. banks for safety and soundness reasons. Using hand-collected data on such actions from the main three U.S. regulators and syndicated loan deals over the years 1997–2014, we find that enforcement actions decrease the total cost of borrowing by approximately 22 basis points (or $4.6 million interest for the average loan). We attribute our finding to a competition-reputation effect that works over and above the lower risk of punished banks post-enforcement and survives in a number of sensitivity tests. We also find that this effect persists for approximately four years post-enforcement.
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