Stock Prices and Real Economic Activity Empirical Results for Germany

Since the mid-1990s, large movements in stock prices have not only raised central bankers' and policy-makers' interest in their implications for real economic activity, but have also led to extensive empirical research in this field. While most of the studies have focussed on the United States or the euro area as a whole, this paper is one of the few providing empirical evidence for Germany. Despite the fact that the significance of equity markets remains much smaller in Germany than in other industrial countries, the empirical analysis confirms that stock price movements are relevant for the German economy: overall, stock price movements have had an impact on both domestic consumption and domestic private investment in recent years. Less surprisingly, the effects prove to be of much less significance than for other countries, in particular the United States, where stock market effects have been substantial. However, as it can be expected that the equity markets will gain further importance in Germany in the long term – e.g. in connection with the need for households to increase privately funded pensions and for many German companies to strengthen their equity and diversify their financing resources – the paper also concludes that the real economy will register more significant effects in future. --

Globalisation and the competitiveness of the euro area

Against the background of increasing competition and other significant structural changes implied by globalisation, maintaining and enhancing competitiveness has evolved into one of the prime concerns in most countries. Following up on previous work (see in particular ECB Occasional Papers No. 30 and No. 55), this Occasional Paper examines the latest developments and prospects for the competitiveness and trade performance of the euro area and the euro area countries. Starting from an analysis of most commonly used, traditional competitiveness indicators, the paper largely confirms the findings of previous studies that there have been substantial adjustments in euro area trade. Euro area firms have taken advantage of the new opportunities offered by globalisation, and have at the same time been increasingly challenged by emerging economies. This is primarily reflected in the loss of export market shares which have been recorded over the last decade. While these can partly be related to the losses in the euro area’s price competitiveness, further adjustment also seems warranted with regard to the export specialisation. Compared with other advanced competitors, the euro area remains relatively more specialised in labourintensive categories of goods and has shown only a few signs of a stronger specialisation in research-intensive goods. Nevertheless, the paper generally calls for a more cautious approach when assessing the prospects for euro area competitiveness, as globalisation has made it increasingly difficult to define and measure competitiveness. Stressing the need to take a broader view on competitiveness, specifically with a stronger emphasis on productivity performance, the paper also introduces a more elaborate framework that takes into account the interactions between country-specific factors and firm-level productivity. It thus makes it possible to construct more broadly defined competitiveness measures. Pointing to four key factors determining the global competitiveness of euro area countries – market accessibility, market size, technological leadership of firms and institutional set-up – the analysis provides further arguments for continuing efforts to increase market integration and strengthen the competitive environment within Europe as a mean of enhancing resource allocation and coping with the challenges globalisation creates. JEL Classification: F15, F43, O52Globalisation, competitiveness, productivity

Stock Prices and Real Economic Activity Empirical Results for Germany

Since the mid-1990s, large movements in stock prices have not only raised central bankers' and policy-makers' interest in their implications for real economic activity, but have also led to extensive empirical research in this field. While most of the studies have focussed on the United States or the euro area as a whole, this paper is one of the few providing empirical evidence for Germany. Despite the fact that the significance of equity markets remains much smaller in Germany than in other industrial countries, the empirical analysis confirms that stock price movements are relevant for the German economy: overall, stock price movements have had an impact on both domestic consumption and domestic private investment in recent years. Less surprisingly, the effects prove to be of much less significance than for other countries, in particular the United States, where stock market effects have been substantial. However, as it can be expected that the equity markets will gain further importance in Germany in the long term - e.g. in connection with the need for households to increase privately funded pensions and for many German companies to strengthen their equity and diversify their financing resources - the paper also concludes that the real economy will register more significant effects in future

Globalisation and the competitiveness of the Euro area

Against the background of increasing competition and other significant structural changes implied by globalisation, maintaining and enhancing competitiveness has evolved into one of the prime concerns in most countries. Following up on previous work (see in particular ECB Occasional Papers No. 30 and No. 55), this Occasional Paper examines the latest developments and prospects for the competitiveness and trade performance of the euro area and the euro area countries. Starting from an analysis of most commonly used, traditional competitiveness indicators, the paper largely confirms the findings of previous studies that there have been substantial adjustments in euro area trade. Euro area firms have taken advantage of the new opportunities offered by globalisation, and have at the same time been increasingly challenged by emerging economies. This is primarily reflected in the loss of export market shares which have been recorded over the last decade. While these can partly be related to the losses in the euro area’s price competitiveness, further adjustment also seems warranted with regard to the export specialisation. Compared with other advanced competitors, the euro area remains relatively more specialised in labour-intensive categories of goods and has shown only a few signs of a stronger specialisation in research-intensive goods. Nevertheless, the paper generally calls for a more cautious approach when assessing the prospects for euro area competitiveness, as globalisation has made it increasingly difficult to define and measure competitiveness. Stressing the need to take a broader view on competitiveness, specifically with a stronger emphasis on productivity performance, the paper also introduces a more elaborate framework that takes into account the interactions between country-specific factors and firm-level productivity. It thus makes it possible to construct more broadly defined competitiveness measures. Pointing to four key factors determining the global competitiveness of euro area countries – market accessibility, market size, technological leadership of firms and institutional set-up – the analysis provides further arguments for continuing efforts to increase market integration and strengthen the competitive environment within Europe as a mean of enhancing resource allocation and coping with the challenges globalisation creates.Globalisation, competitiveness, productivity

Globalisation and the competitiveness of the euro area

Against the background of increasing competition and other significant structural changes implied by globalisation, maintaining and enhancing competitiveness has evolved into one of the prime concerns in most countries. Following up on previous work (see in particular ECB Occasional Papers No. 30 and No. 55), this Occasional Paper examines the latest developments and prospects for the competitiveness and trade performance of the euro area and the euro area countries. Starting from an analysis of most commonly used, traditional competitiveness indicators, the paper largely confirms the findings of previous studies that there have been substantial adjustments in euro area trade. Euro area firms have taken advantage of the new opportunities offered by globalisation, and have at the same time been increasingly challenged by emerging economies. This is primarily reflected in the loss of export market shares which have been recorded over the last decade. While these can partly be related to the losses in the euro area’s price competitiveness, further adjustment also seems warranted with regard to the export specialisation. Compared with other advanced competitors, the euro area remains relatively more specialised in labourintensive categories of goods and has shown only a few signs of a stronger specialisation in research-intensive goods. Nevertheless, the paper generally calls for a more cautious approach when assessing the prospects for euro area competitiveness, as globalisation has made it increasingly difficult to define and measure competitiveness. Stressing the need to take a broader view on competitiveness, specifically with a stronger emphasis on productivity performance, the paper also introduces a more elaborate framework that takes into account the interactions between country-specific factors and firm-level productivity. It thus makes it possible to construct more broadly defined competitiveness measures. Pointing to four key factors determining the global competitiveness of euro area countries – market accessibility, market size, technological leadership of firms and institutional set-up – the analysis provides further arguments for continuing efforts to increase market integration and strengthen the competitive environment within Europe as a mean of enhancing resource allocation and coping with the challenges globalisation creates

Banking consolidation and small businessfinance: empirical evidence for Germany

Since the early 1990s an unprecedented process of consolidation has taken place in the banking sector in most industrialised countries raising concern of policymakers that it may reduce access to credit for the small business sector. While most of the existing empirical studies have focused on the U.S., this paper is the first one empirically investigating the effects of banking consolidation in Germany. As small and medium sized German companies traditionally almost exclusively rely on bank credit and as they represent the vast majority of the corporate sector reduced credit availability for those companies could particularly endanger economic growth. Based on an exceptional panel dataset comprising merged data of the German credit register and balance sheet data of German firms and banks we find - contrary to public fear - that the ongoing banking consolidation in Germany does not have a significant negative impact on the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). We measure the financing opportunities of SMEs based on the bank debt/assets ratio and the logarithmized credit size and control both explicitly for bank mergers and for the increase in the average bank size in the course of the consolidation process. In addition, we observe that the concentration in the banking market is insignificant for SME financing and that there is no significant difference between commercial banks, savings banks and private banks. --Banking consolidation,bank mergers,SME financing

External and macroeconomic adjustment in the larger euro area countries

A balanced current account in the euro area has disguised sizeable net lending imbalances at the country level, exposing the common currency area to severe pressures during the financial crisis. The key contribution of this paper is to evaluate the adjustment process through the lenses of the New Multi Country Model at the country and sectoral level. We find that shocks to the external, fiscal and monetary environment help explain, to a large degree, the sizeable current account adjustment and rise in unemployment in Spain. The model also suggests that a recovery in wage competitiveness helps to reduce external deficits at the cost of higher net borrowing by households. The stimulus effects on aggregate demand, via the interest rate response of the common monetary authority and the competitiveness channel, are present but not overly large, as the rebound in economic activity depends mainly on global demand, supportive monetary policy, business and consumer confidence

Euro area cross-border financial flows and the global financial crisis

This paper analyses the impact of the global financial crisis on euro area cross-border financial flows by comparing recent developments with the main pre-crisis trends. Two prominent features of the period of turmoil were (i) the sizeable deleveraging of external financial exposures by the private sector and, in particular, the banking sector from 2008 and (ii) the significant changes in the composition of euro area cross-border portfolio flows, as investors shifted from equity to debt instruments, from long-term to short- term debt instruments and from private to public sector securities. Since 2009 such trends have started reversing. However, as balance sheet restructuring by financial and non-financial corporations continues, cross-border financial flows have remained well below pre-crisis levels. The degree of resumption and volatility of crossborder financial activity may have a major bearing on growth prospects for the euro area and may also matter from a financial stability perspective. We argue that the recent experience, first of extraordinary growth and then of scaling down of international financial activity, calls for enhanced monitoring of developments in crossborder financial flows so that the underlying risks to the domestic economy stemming from the financial sector can be better assessed. Looking forward, successful implementation of policy actions to promote macroeconomic discipline and enhance financial regulation and supervision could influence, inter alia, the composition and volume of cross-border capital flows, contributing to a more efficient and sustainable allocation of resources

PET study on central movement control

Die Imagination von Bewegungen stellt ein probates Mittel dar, um mit funktioneller Bildgebung zentral steuernde Prozesse darzustellen und die Repräsentation exekutiver Vorgänge aussen vor zu lassen. Wir untersuchten die Imagination sequentieller Bewegungen bei sechs Probanden mittels PET anhand einer automatisierten Fingerbewegungs- Aufgabe. Wir zeigten eine Beteiligung des primärmotorischen Kortex bei reiner Bewegungsimagination. Zudem stützen unsere Ergebnisse die Hypothese einer aufgabenspezifischen Unterteilung des prämotorischen Kortex, wobei die rostralen Anteile vorwiegend Kontrollfunktionen besitzen.Functional imaging of movement imagery has the potential to demonstrate central control mechanisms without representing executive processes. We used PET to investigate the imagination of sequential movements in six probands using an automated finger-movement task. We demonstrated involvement of the primary motor cortex in pure movement imagination. Further our results point towards a functional subdivision of the premotor cortex, in which rostral parts mainly seem to have control function

Reactive Interactions between the Ionic Liquid BMP‐TFSI and a Na Surface

In order to obtain atomistic insights into the initial stages of the formation of the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) in Na ion or Na metal batteries, we employ surface chemistry experiments and DFT calculations to study the interactions and reactions between a Na surface and the ionic liquid (IL) 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (BMP-TFSI), a candidate to be used as electrolyte in batteries. Oxygen-free Na thin films, which were grown on Ru(0001) and characterized by X-ray and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS, UPS), can be understood as model of a Na-rich electrode. After deposition of submonolayer to multilayer BMP-TFSI films on the Na thin films at room temperature, XPS measurements revealed partial decomposition and the formation of a ‘contact layer’ at the Na surface, consisting of mainly TFSI-based decomposition products