DIW Roundup

DIW Roundup 139 / 2022

Rent Control Effects through the Lens of Empirical Research

Rent control is a highly debated social policy that has been omnipresent since World War I. Since 2010s, it has been experiencing a true renaissance, for many cities and countries facing housing shortage are desperately looking for solutions of the chronic housing shortage and direct their attention to controlling housing rents and to other restrictive policies. Is rent control useful or does it create ...

DIW Roundup 137 / 2020

Why Are We Eating so Much Meat?

There are various reasons why humans may want to reduce their consumption of meat and other animal products. In the following, we lay out important stylized facts about individual meat consumption, and then discuss the challenges and puzzles surrounding effective behavior change toward more sustainable, plant-based diets.

DIW Roundup 136 / 2019

Stranded Assets and Resource Rents: Between Flaws, Dependency, and Economic Diversification

Asset stranding–the unanticipated depreciation of assets (e.g. resource re-serves, infrastructure, stocks) due to market shifts such as policy interventions or innovation–is at the core of current debates in energy and climate. This roundup presents prominent contributions to the discussion with a focus on fuel-exporting economies. We discuss strengths and limits of the concept as well as potential ...

DIW Roundup 133 / 2019

Insolvency Regimes and Economic Outcomes

When in distress, a firm may need restructuring or liquidation; in either case, legal uncertainty compounds the difficulty. Sound and efficient insolvency regimes are important as these not just positively affect investment, innovation, and economic growth, but also the supply and cost of credit. The design of appropriate insolvency frameworks in Europe is, however, still controversial. The debate ...

DIW Roundup 131 / 2019

The Impact of Mobile Money in Developing Countries

Mobile money is a success story in terms of facilitating account ownership and payments in developing and emerging countries. Today, telecommunication companies offer mobile money services across more than 90 countries. The most popular services are deposits and instant digital money transfers between users. Widespread mobile money adoption is boosting financial inclusion, reducing in transaction costs ...

DIW Roundup 130 / 2019

Do Default Assignments Increase Savings of the Poor? Empirical Evidence

Although households in developing and emerging countries are relatively poor, there is potential to save. For example, one study estimates that up to 8.1% of a poor household’s budget in such countries is spent on so-called temptation goods, like alcohol, tobacco, and festivals (Banerjee and Duflo, 2007). At the same time, many households are aware of the fact that they do not save enough. They name ...

DIW Roundup 129 / 2019

Stability Implications of Financial Interconnectedness under the Capital Markets Union

In the run-up to the European elections in May 2019, the European Commission is trying to advance the initiatives laid out in its action plan for a European Capital Markets Union (CMU). In order to diversify financing sources and to increase private risk sharing, the CMU aims at deepening the integration of European equity and debt markets. While there are benefits associated with more cross-border ...

DIW Roundup 128 / 2019

Measuring the Effect of Foreign Exchange Intervention Policies on Exchange Rates

Central bank intervention in foreign exchange markets is a common tool to influence exchange rates. Although central bankers are convinced of their policy’s effectiveness, econometric estimates of precise effects differ across studies. The difficulties with estimations mostly result from a lack of adequate data. This article highlights different econometric approaches that aim to mitigate estimation ...

DIW Roundup 125 / 2018

Innovative Business Models for Cleantechs

DIW Roundup 124 / 2018

Environmental Regulations: Lessons from the Command-and-Control Approach

Policy makers have long favored command-and-control (CAC) methods to tackle environmental damage. The number of CAC policies devoted to environmental protection has increased steadily since the 1950s and have been a large part of the overall portfolio of environmental laws andregulation in the industrialized world. Schmitt and Schulze (2011) document that between 1970 and 2011 the two most prevalent ...

DIW Roundup 123 / 2018

Linking Cap-and-Trade Systems

Linking cap-and-trade systems promises gains in cost effectiveness and signals a strong commitment to carbon policy. Linking is also seen as one possible way of converging from regional climate policy initiatives toward a global climate policy architecture. Two linked systems have been established recently, one in Europe and one in North America. However, linking also comes with challenges, such as ...

DIW Roundup 122 / 2018

Regulatory Differences and International Financial Integration

The Capital Markets Union (CMU) – an initiative of the European Commission – aims to unify and deepen capital markets across EU Member States by removing existing barriers to cross-border investment and, in particular, harmonizing financial and business regulations. However, harmonizing institutional frameworks across the EU Member States that historically have different legal traditions is difficult ...

DIW Roundup 121 / 2018

The Macroeconomic Effects of Exchange Rate Movements

The macroeconomic effects of exchange rate movements have been subject to an extensive debate in international economics. Traditionally, much of the discussion was focused on the relation between the effective exchange rate and the trade balance. However, the process of financial globalization has led to a sharp increase in foreign asset and liability positions across countries and also to a greater ...

DIW Roundup 120 / 2018

What Determines the Costs of Fiscal Consolidations?

Recent studies have proposed several factors that determine how fiscal consolidations affect the economy. This Roundup focuses on several of these determinants. Namely, it discusses how the composition of the consolidation measure, the state of the business cycle, the level of private indebtedness and the amount of fiscal stress during which the measure is implemented influences the consequences of ...

DIW Roundup 119 / 2018

Monetary Policy Normalization in the Euro Area

The ECB announced in October 2018 that it would begin to cut back the amount of monthly asset purchases starting January 2018 while extending the duration of the purchases until at least September 2018. At it latest Governor’s Council meeting in January 2019 it decided to remain on this track despite a sharp appreciation of the euro in the meanwhile. These steps were just two on a longer and potentially ...

DIW Roundup 117 / 2017

International Investments and Current Account Imbalances: The Importance of Valuation Changes

Global capital flows have strongly increased from the 1980s until the outbreak of the financial crisis. As a result of this development, Germany's foreign investment has risen to around 250 percent of gross domestic product while foreign investments in Germany have increased to about 200 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product. This positive difference between Germany’s assets and liabilities is ...

DIW Roundup 116 / 2017

Capital Market Integration and Macroeconomic Stability

After the establishment of the Banking Union, the European Commission is working on measures to foster capital market deepening in Europe. Key goals for a European Capital Markets Union are to provide firms with alternative funding sources to bank credit and to make economies more resilient to local shocks through better international risk sharing. While open capital markets can improve portfolio diversification, ...

DIW Roundup 115 / 2017

The Use of Financial Market Variables in Forecasting

Financial market indicators can provide valuable information for forecasting macroeconomic developments. In response to the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, the role of financial variables for forecasting has been revisited, and new empirical and theoretical forecasting methods able to explicitly incorporate financial market information have been developed. This roundup discusses characteristics ...

DIW Roundup 114 / 2017

Microenterprises in Developing Countries: Is there Growth Potential?

Microenterprises account for a large fraction of employment in developing countries and they are likely to increase in importance in the future. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, around 8 million additional jobs need to be created annually in order to cope with the increasing number of new entrants into the labour market (The World Bank, 2013). As microenterprises typically only provide subsistence ...

DIW Roundup 113 / 2017

Does More Education Protect against Mental Health Problems?

Mental health conditions are a leading cause of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and health costs worldwide: They account for 199 million DALYs or 37 percent of healthy life years lost from non-communicable diseases. The sum of direct and indirect costs worldwide were estimated to amount to 2.5 trillion US dollars in 2010 and projected to increase to 6 trillion US dollars in 2030 (Bloom et al., ...