Ein Stopp der russischen Gaslieferungen würde zu einer Rezession der deutschen Wirtschaft führen. Nicht alle Regionen wären davon gleich betroffen: Vor allem wäre dort, wo das Verarbeitende Gewerbe ein großes Gewicht hat, mit einem deutlich stärkeren Einbruch der Wirtschaftsleistung zu rechnen als andernorts. Deshalb wäre Westdeutschland und dort insbesondere der Süden stärker betroffen als der Osten Deutschlands. Dagegen spielt für die Frage, wie viele Arbeitsplätze durch einen bestimmten Rückgang der Wertschöpfung gefährdet sind, die Höhe der Arbeitsproduktivität eine ausschlaggebende Rolle.

We find that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) reduce their investee firms’ tax avoidance. We provide evidence that the effect is driven by the institutional distance between FIIs’ home countries/regions and host countries/regions. Specifically, we find that the effect is driven by the influence of FIIs from countries/regions with high-quality institutions (i.e., common law, high government effectiveness, and high regulatory quality) on investee firms located in countries/regions with low-quality institutions. Furthermore, we show that the effect is concentrated on FIIs with little experience in the investee countries/regions or FIIs with stronger monitoring incentives. Finally, we find that FIIs are more likely to vote against management if the firm has a higher level of tax avoidance.

By adopting a difference-in-differences specification combined with propensity score matching, I provide evidence using the microdata of German banks that stateowned savings banks have lent less than credit cooperatives during the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, the weaker lending effects of state-owned banks are pronounced for long-term and nonrevolving loans but insignificant for short-term and revolving loans. Moreover, the negative impact of government ownership is larger for borrowers who are more exposed to the COVID-19 shock and in regions where the ruling parties are longer in office and more positioned on the right side of the political spectrum.

Recent financial crises have prompted the interest in understanding how banking globalization interacts with domestic institutions in shaping foreign shocks’ transmission. This paper uses regional banking data from Brazil to show that a foreign funding shock to banks negatively affects lending by their regional branches. This effect increases in the presence of frictions in internal capital markets, which affect branches’ capacity to access funding from other regions via intra-bank linkages. These results also matter on an aggregate level, as municipality-level credit and job flows drop in exposed regions. Policies aiming to reduce the fragmented structure of regional banking markets could moderate the propagation of foreign shocks.

We use the World Input–Output Database (WIOD) combined with regional sectoral employment data to estimate the potential regional employment effects of international trade barriers. We study the case of a no-deal Brexit in which imports to the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) would be subject to tariffs and non-tariff trade costs. First, we derive the decline in UK final goods imports from the EU from industry-specific international trade elasticities, tariffs and non-tariff trade costs. Using input–output analysis, we estimate the potential output and employment effects for 56 industries and 43 countries on the national level. The absolute effects would be largest in big EU countries which have close trade relationships with the UK, such as Germany and France. However, there would also be large countries outside the EU which would be heavily affected via global value chains, such as China, for example. The relative effects (in percent of total employment) would be largest in Ireland followed by Belgium. In a second step, we split up the national effects on the NUTS-2 level for EU member states and additionally on the county (NUTS-3) level for Germany. The share of affected workers varies between 0.03% and 3.4% among European NUTS-2 regions and between 0.15% and 0.4% among German counties. A general result is that indirect effects via global value chains, i.e., trade in intermediate inputs, are more important than direct effects via final demand.

Die hohen Infektionszahlen und der seit November 2020 immer wieder verlängerte Lockdown führten im ersten Quartal 2021 zu einem Rückgang des Bruttoinlandsprodukts um 1,7%. Insbesondere der private Konsum litt unter den strengen staatlichen Restriktionen. Hingegen liefen die Warenexporte gut und verhinderten einen stärkeren Einbruch der deutschen Wirtschaft. Nachdem bereits Ende des ersten Quartals in einigen Regionen Deutschlands begonnen wurde, die Restriktionen etwas zurückzunehmen, kam es aus Sorge vor einem weiteren Anwachsen der dritten Corona-Welle in der zweiten Aprilhälfte zu einer bundesweit regulierten Verschärfung der Lockdown-Regeln. Seit Anfang Mai gehen die Corona-Neuerkrankungen in Deutschland nun zurück. Das dürfte wohl neben einem saisonalen Effekt auch auf die endlich in Fahrt gekommene Impfkampagne zurückzuführen sein. Der Lockdown dürfte in absehbarer Zeit aufgehoben werden können. Insbesondere die private Konsumnachfrage dürfte davon profitieren und zusammen mit der robusten Nachfrage aus dem Ausland die Wirtschaftsleistung laut IWH-Flash-Indikator im zweiten Quartal 2021 um 2,1% und im dritten Quartal um 2,4% steigen lassen.

We provide an overview of productivity development and other related indicators in Asia and Pacific (APAC) countries, with comparisons with the Europe region. We use the seventh vintage firm-level data from the Productivity Research Network in the APAC region and CompNet in Europe for our study. The overall results show that the productivity growth in developed APAC countries (Australia, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea) is significantly ahead of the growth in developing APAC countries (India and the People’s Republic of China) and on par with the EU’s growth. There is an ongoing process of bottom firms catching up with top firms in the Republic of Korea and the richest EU countries. Regarding employment and labor skills, employment growth has generally been quite stagnant in all regions. Labor skills, for which we use the wage premium as a proxy, are quite similar across most regions, with the richest EU countries showing a higher premium than the rest. Our test of the productivity–employment link indicates that the size of employment tends to have a greater impact on productivity in APAC countries, while labor skills have greater emphasis in the EU.

Die Gemeinschaftsaufgabe „Verbesserung der regionalen Wirtschaftsstruktur“ (GRW) ist das wichtigste regionalpolitische Programm in Deutschland und wurde nach der Wiedervereinigung in großem Umfang zur Unterstützung des wirtschaftlichen Transformationsprozesses in den neuen Bundesländern eingesetzt. Ein Überblick über nationale und internationale kausalanalytische Studien zur Wirkung von Investitionszuschüssen zeigt, dass solche Programme positive Effekte auf die Entwicklung insbesondere von Beschäftigung und Einkommen haben. Nicht nur die geförderten Betriebe profitieren von der Unterstützung, sondern die Regionen insgesamt. Auch wenn die Studien nicht bis in die frühen 1990er Jahre zurückreichen, kann man daraus schließen, dass die GRW zur wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung in Ostdeutschland beigetragen hat – und zum Aufholprozess.

We present the first evidence on the role of occupational choices and acquired skills for migrant selection. Combining novel data from a representative Mexican task survey with rich individual-level worker data, we find that Mexican migrants to the United States have higher manual skills and lower cognitive skills than nonmigrants. Results hold within narrowly defined region–industry–occupation cells and for all education levels. Consistent with a Roy/Borjas-type selection model, differential returns to occupational skills between the United States and Mexico explain the selection pattern. Occupational skills are more important to capture the economic motives for migration than previously used worker characteristics.