KSA – Beitritt oder Gründung nicht ausschreibungspflichtig

All in all it can be stated that both, the establishment and the joining of a KSA, is an activity which is exclusively allocated to the right of self organisation of the local authorities. It is a measure of internal organisation without external procurement character. For this reason from the first the application of the procurement rules following the competition law is already excluded.Even if – in contrary to other argumentation – the competition law rules should be regarded as applicable, the principle of in-house award exceptionally takes effect.     

Strukturwandel: Zukunftsangst in der Industrie

Wirtschaftsdienst - Die Corona-Krise überlagert in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung, wie stark der Strukturwandel in der Industrie bereits zu weitreichendem Arbeitsplatzabbau führt....     

Bank monitoring: Evidence from syndicated loans

We directly measure banks’ monitoring of syndicated loans. Banks typically demand borrower information on at least a monthly basis. About 20% of loans involve active monitoring (i.e., site visits or third-party appraisals). Monitoring increases with the lead bank’s incentives and the value of information and is negatively associated with loan spreads and maturity. The monitoring captured by our measures can either complement or substitute for covenant-based monitoring, depending on whether the monitoring informs covenant compliance. Banks increase monitoring following deteriorations in borrower financial condition and credit line drawdowns. Finally, monitoring is positively related to future covenant violations and loan renegotiations.     

Right-Wing Populism and Neoliberalism in Germany: The AfD’s Embrace of Ordoliberalism

This article analyses the ambiguous relation between right-wing populism and neoliberalism in Germany. It concentrates on the connections between and convergence of right-wing populism and ordoliberalism, a specific type of neoliberalism that was developed by the Freiburg School since the late 1920s and which the new right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) explicitly focuses on in its economic programme. In its attempt to analyse the affinity of the AfD to ordoliberalism, this study relies on Michel Foucault’s account of ordoliberalism in his book The Birth of Biopolitics and his concept of governmentality. It was found that the AfD wants to bring ordoliberalism into service of an authoritarian project in Germany and beyond. This economic approach combines neoliberalism with authoritarian forms of government through the governmentalisation of the state. Ordoliberals prescribe a regulatory framework for the economy which is centred on the creation of a competitive order. It is meant to produce and justify social differences. Right-wing populists connect the economic differentiation system provided by ordoliberalism with the differentiation systems of nation, race, religion and culture. Thus, the neoliberal principle of competition is used not only to justify inequality among German citizens but also among European countries.     

A threshold cointegration analysis of interest rate pass-through to UK mortgage rates

This paper empirically analyses the interest rate transmission mechanism in the United Kingdom by exploring the pass-through of the official rate to the money market rate and of the market rate to the mortgage rate. Potential asymmetries, due to financial market conditions and monetary policy, lead to the use of a nonlinear threshold error-correction model, with hypothesis tests based on nonstandard bootstrap procedures that take into account the discrete nature of changes in the official rate. The empirical results indicate the presence of substantial asymmetries in both steps of the process, with these asymmetries depending on past changes in the money market rate and whether these are motivated by official rate changes. Generalized impulse response function analysis shows that adjustments differ with regard to the sign and magnitude of interest rate changes in a way that is consistent with conditions in the interbank and mortgage markets over the recent period.     

The effect of personal portfolio reporting on private investors

Information search is costly for private households, especially in relation to their wealth. This paper investigates how retail customers react to free portfolio reporting—and thus reduced search costs—in a unique experimental setting. A large German direct bank sends portfolio reports to 10,000 customers while maintaining a control group of equal size and structure that receives no reports. Analyzing demographics as well as detailed portfolio and trade data, we find that gender, wealth, trade frequency, risk tolerance, and diversification drive the interest in portfolio information. Reading a portfolio report also triggers trading actions; thus, investors seem to appreciate the reduced information costs and act on the information. In addition to contributing to the financial literature on households’ information acquisition, this study derives valuable implications for financial institutions regarding communications and services for their customers.     

The new ECB voting system: Some room for improvement

In order to overcome the “numbers problem”, the ECB recently proposed a weighted rotation system that limits the number of votes to at most 21. Many academics heavily criticise the proposal. Besides very fundamental criticism the composite indicator that allocates national central banks into the voting groups has especially been called into question. Its implementation would cause some conflicts concerning procedure and in connection with the discretionary elements of the ECB proposal.     

EU Constitutional Governance: Failure as Opportunity!?

The French and Dutch rejection of the proposed EU Constitution in May 2005 threw the European Union into what many observers regard as its deepest crisis to date. This crisis can also be seen as a unique opportunity for political, economic and institutional renewal, however. The following article outlines the problems presently facing Europe and discusses what changes would have to be made in the EU system of governance in order to overcome them.      

European water infrastructures: Regulatory flux void of reference?

This article outlines the structure of, and the challenges facing, the water industries in several European countries and describes their respective experiences with technocratic infrastructure management, delegated supervision of private concessions, and price-cap regulation. It then addresses common concerns related to operating efficiency and pricing to point to the dearth of comparable data, which limits meaningful benchmarking of productivity and infrastructure conditions, thwarts regulatory and managerial supervision and hampers the identification of some global norms. Attaining that reference calls for an independent, central body able to shed light on national performance and stakeholder interests.     

Are heterogeneous FOMC forecasts consistent with the Fed’s monetary policy?

Yes, they are! We find that although there is a surprisingly high dispersion of individual forecasts and some dissent on the Federal Funds target, the FOMC’s individual behavior is well described by a Taylor-type rule.