Central bank transparency and financial market expectations: The case of emerging markets

In this paper, we study how central bank transparency influences the formation of money market expectations in emerging markets. The sample covers 25 countries for the period from January 1998 to December 2009. We find, first, that transparency reduces the bias (the difference between the money market rate and the weighted expected target rate over the contract period) in money market expectations. The effect is larger for countries with no exchange rate peg and countries with low income. Second, an intermediate level of transparency is found to have the most favorable influence on money market expectations: neither complete secrecy nor complete transparency is optimal. Finally, all subcategories of the Eijffinger and Geraats (2006) index lead to a smaller bias in expectations, with political transparency having the largest effect.     

Enhancing the EU’s Energy Supply Security—An Evaluation of the Nabucco Project and an Introduction to Its Open Season Capacity Allocation Process

The Russian dominance of the European Union (EU)’s natural gas supplies has put the independence of the EU at risk. This paper presents an evaluation of the Nabucco gas pipeline project—considered by some to be the most economical link to new natural gas sources—to determine whether it would help the EU to diversify its gas supplies in a cost-effective way, thus improving its energy supply security in future years. Furthermore, an introduction to the Nabucco Open Season Capacity Allocation Process is given. Applying empirical methods and competitive pipeline benchmarking analysis, three hypotheses related to the Nabucco natural experiment are evaluated: while hypothesis (1) focuses on the strength of demand for the Nabucco pipeline transportation capacities, hypotheses (2) and (3) examine fair usage rights and overall cost effectiveness of this project. Empirical results show that, due to the EU’s increasing long-term gas demand and decreasing indigenous production, there is a strong demand for the Nabucco gas pipeline by gas shippers. Furthermore, the empirical survey reveals that Nabucco provides a fair capacity allocation of fifty percent to third party shippers. Finally, competitive benchmarking shows Nabucco is indeed a cost-effective new pipeline and a link to fresh natural gas sources for Europe. Based on these results, it is anticipated that “Nabucco” will not only remain the name of a famous opera, but will also become the term associated with one of the most successful energy projects in Europe.     

Die Erwartungen der Wirtschaft für 2012

Nach einem wirtschaftlich sehr positiven Jahr 2011, mussten die ?konomischen Prognosen für das Wachstum 2012 deutlich herabgesetzt werden. Die Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitute erwarten für Deutschland nur noch ein Wachstum von 0,8%. Die Vertreter der einzelnen Industriezweige sind aber etwas optimistischer als die Prognosen für die Gesamtwirtschaft.     

Market Designs for a Completely Renewable Power Sector

The article discusses whether the current German electricity market design is suitable for an electricity system completely based on renewable sources, and analyzes alternatives. Such a system becomes ever more likely due to the phase-out of nuclear power and the carbon reduction targets. Various existing scenarios for a completely renewable electricity system are analyzed and compared with respect to the contribution of different renewable technologies. Challenges for the market design arising from the differences between the current and a completely renewable system are identified??notably problems with cost recovery and investment incentives, an increased need for balancing and/or intraday adjustments, an increased diversity of actors, grid congestion and the continuing occurrence of market power. The current market design??s ability to solve these issues is assessed with the result that all but the critical problem of investment incentives and cost recovery can be solved by adapting certain rules. A?comparison with other suggested market designs reveals that some designs could ensure cost recovery and investment incentives. However, these market designs have other drawbacks. Therefore, the identification of the optimal market design for a completely renewable electricity system requires further research regarding the qualitative and quantitative effects of different changes to the current market design. The article concludes by developing concrete policy recommendations.     

Probability and quantile estimation from individually micro-aggregated data

Micro-aggregation is a frequently used strategy to anonymize data before they are released to the scientific public. A sample of a continuous random variable is individually micro-aggregated by first sorting and grouping the data into groups of equal size and then replacing the values of the variable in each group by their group mean. In a similar way, data with more than one variable can be anonymized by individual micro-aggregation. Data thus distorted may still be used for statistical analysis. We show that if probabilities and quantiles are estimated in the usual way by computing relative frequencies and sample quantiles, respectively, these estimates are consistent and asymptotically normal under mild conditions.     

Emerging economies' attraction of foreign direct investment

This paper uses a composite measure to examine why some countries attract more foreign direct investment (FDI) than others. The measure considers all identified, measurable, and comparable socioeconomic aspects that affect FDI decisions on an aggregated country level. As a result, we can rank 127 countries with respect to their FDI attraction. The measure allows detailed strength and weakness analyses and enhances the discussion of why FDI flows are concentrated in advanced economies. Additionally, the findings reveal the areas in which emerging countries should improve in order to narrow existing gaps. Our robustness checks indicate that the composite measure accurately tracks real FDI activity.     

Capital Structure,Corporate Taxation and Firm Age*

This paper analyses the relationship between corporate taxation, firm age and debt. We adapt a standard model of capital structure choice under corporate taxation, focusing on the financing and investment decisions typically faced by a firm. Our model suggests that the debt ratio is associated positively with the corporate tax rate and negatively with firm age. Further, we predict that the tax-induced advantage of debt is more important for older firms than for younger ones. To test these hypotheses empirically, we use a cross-section of around 405,000 firms from 35 European countries and 127 NACE three-digit industries. In line with previous research, we find that a firm's debt ratio increases with the corporate tax rate. Further, we observe that older firms exhibit smaller debt ratios than their younger counterparts. Finally, consistent with our theoretical model, we find a positive interaction between corporate taxation and firm age, indicating that the impact of corporate taxation on debt increases over a firm's lifetime.