Macroeconomic News and Stock Returns in the United States and Germany

Abstract. Using daily data for the January 1997 to June 2002 period, we analyze similarities and differences in the impact of macroeconomic news on stock returns in the United States and Germany. We consider 27 different types of news for the United States and 12 different types of news for Germany. For the United States, we present evidence for asymmetric reactions of stock prices to news. In a boom (recession) period, bad (good) news on GDP growth and unemployment or lower (higher) than expected interest rates may be good news for stock prices. In the period under consideration there is little evidence for asymmetric effects in Germany. However, in the case of Germany, international news appears at least as important as domestic news. There is no evidence that US stock prices are influenced by German news. The analysis of bi-hourly data for Germany confirms these results.     

Dynastic Inequality Compared: Multigenerational Mobility in the United States,the United Kingdom,and Germany

Using harmonized household survey data, we analyze long‐run social mobility in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and test recent theories of multigenerational persistence of socioeconomic status. In this country comparison setting, we find evidence against a universal law of social mobility. Our results show that the long‐run persistence of socioeconomic status and the validity of a first‐order Markov chain in the intergenerational transmission of human capital is country‐specific. Furthermore, we find that the direct and independent effect of grandparents' social status on grandchildren's status tends to vary by gender and institutional context.     

Linkages among Interest Rates in the United States, Germany and Norway

The Johansen multivariate cointegration methodology is used to analyze relationships among short-term and long-term interest rates in the United States, Germany and Norway. A variance decomposition approach is applied to estimate the proportion of each interest rate's forecast error variance attributable to innovations in the other interest rates. Impulse response functions are plotted to illustrate the speed with which interest rate events are transmitted between capital markets. The analyses illustrate that US interest rates have a significant influence on both German and Norwegian interest rates, while the reverse effect is modest. Norway is also strongly exposed to German interest rate movements, which reflects the consequences of a small country linking its currency to the value of European currencies.     

A Head-to-Head Comparison of Augmented Wealth in Germany and the United States*

We examine the composition of augmented household wealth (i.e., the sum of net worth and pension wealth) in the United States and Germany. Pension wealth makes up a considerable portion of household wealth, of about 48 percent in the United States and 61 percent in Germany. When pension wealth is included in household wealth, the Gini coefficient falls from 0.889 to 0.700 in the United States, and from 0.755 to 0.508 in Germany. If the wealth shares in Germany were the same as in the United States, this would lead to a 12.6 percent increase in the Gini coefficient in the augmented wealth distribution in Germany.     

美、日、德资本作用模式的特点

在全球经济一体化的今天，银行资本、证券资本和风险资本发挥资本融通和配置作用的特点不但有了明显的变化，而且形成了以美国、日本和德国为代表的几种典型的金融资本作用模式。本文试图对此进行阐述，希望对我国金融资本体系的建设提供借鉴作用。１．美国模式。美国模式是以银行业与证券业分离为主要特征的，银行提供短期资本，证券市场提供长期资本，风险基金提供高新技术企业风险资本，三者共同成为美国产业获取资本的三条渠道。尽管目前美国金融业正在取消进入壁垒，消除银行业与证券业的严格分业界限，银行和证券公司都开始通过子公司…     

英国和德国可再生能源产业激励政策和实施效果的比较

英国和德国都是国际上控制气候变化和开发可替代能源的积极倡导者,但目前,两国在可再生能源的开发和利用方面存在较大的差距:截至2012年,英国和德国可再生能源在最终能源消费中的占比分别为4.1%和12.6%;可再生能源的总装机容量分别为15538和76017MW。究其原因,主要是由两国不同的能源政策造成的,英国采取的是类似配额制的可再生能源义务令制度,而德国采用的是固定上网电价机制。事实证明,德国的入网电价体系优于英国的可再生能源义务令,因为它在一定时期内能为可再生能源发电商提供稳定的回报。英国尽管在可再生能源的开发和利用方面落后于德国,但英国自然条件优越,开发利用可再生能源的潜力巨大,加上政府的积极努力,英国可再生能源产业的发展有望得到较大改观。     

美、日、德制造业国际化经营比较及启示

美、日、德等国制造业国际化经营程度都很高 ,产品出口和跨国投资额都占有较高比重 ,而且取得了较好的经济效益。本文分析美、日、德国制造业国际化经营取得较好经济效益的原因 ,从而得出对我国制造业国际化经营的启示。     

A tale of two federalisms: Germany,the United States and the ubiquity of centralization

This paper offers a comparison of government centralization in the United States and in Germany. After briefly laying out the history of federalism in both countries, we identify the instruments of centralization at work. It is argued that an initial constitutional framework of competitive federalism does not prevent the long-term centralization of competencies. Against a background of historical evidence, we discuss the political economics of government centralization. It is argued that formal institutions clearly have an effect on the pathways of government centralization, but not necessarily on the broader trend of centralization. The conclusion is reached that preservation of state and local autonomy may eventually hinge on informal political institutions.     

Efficiency of hospitals in Germany: a DEA-bootstrap approach

Various attempts to assess the performance of German hospitals have generated a wide range of estimates regarding their efficiency. These attempts were based on different, often rather small data sets consisting of heterogeneous hospitals; the techniques applied range from simple benchmarking approaches to studies which employ Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Some studies report ‘dramatic differences in efficiency’ and propose savings potentials of 50%; others find an average efficiency in excess of 95% and characterize almost 75% of their observations as fully efficient. This study presents results for two datasets representative of two segments of the German hospital system. These segments comprise all hospitals that have one internal medicine and one surgery department; the hospitals are located in the old federal states of Germany. None of the hospitals provides tertiary care. DEA can be applied because all hospitals offer a comparable quality and range of services. The results were estimated with a DEA-bootstrapping procedure and suggest an average bias–corrected efficiency of around 80%.     

Economic stagnation in Weimar Germany: a structuralist perspective

Mexico and Argentina in the 1990s as well as Weimar Germany in the 1920s implemented similar exchange-rate-based stabilization programs which were successful in stopping inflation, but failed to generate the domestic savings and investment rates necessary for a sustainable growth path. It is argued that in both cases substantial foreign capital inflows were attracted by a stable nominal exchange rate and high interest rates, which alleviated the distributional struggle driving high inflation. However, this incentive structure caused a profit squeeze in the tradable goods sector due to an appreciating real exchange rate precipitating the ultimate collapse of the programs.     

Seasonality and the Life-cycle Permanent Income Hypothesis: Evidence for Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany

Intra-year observed consumption displays substantial seasonality. Consumers allocate their non-durable expenditure over the four quarters of the year, maximising total utility subject to the period-to-period budget constraint. Osborn (1988) derives a seasonally-varying utility function, for which Hall's (1978) consumption function implies a periodic autoregressive model with a unit root. Using quarterly seasonally unadjusted consumption for Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany, recently developed tests for seasonality and periodicity are used to examine the modified rational expectations life-cycle permanent income hypothesis and to reinforce previous findings in the literature. Seasonal habit persistence is introduced as an alternative model and its empirical adequacy is found to be significant. Finally, a multivariate test of the excess sensitivity puzzle excludes a predictive role for lagged income changes.     

Towards a multidimensional poverty index for Germany

This paper proposes a more comprehensive multidimensional poverty index for an advanced economy like Germany. Drawing on the capability approach as conceptual framework, I apply the Alkire–Foster method to the German context. Special attention is paid to the conceptual integration. Specifically, I argue for including material deprivation and employment as important dimensions, but against using an additional lack-of-income indicator. The results are consistent with previous findings and also offer new insights. In particular, I find specific poverty profiles (e.g., for the elderly), but also that gaps in poverty between subpopulations change over time. Importantly, the results suggest that genuine multidimensional measures add unique insights, which neither a single indicator, nor a dashboard approach can offer. Finally, the analysis reveals multidimensional and income-poverty measures to disagree on who is poor. The subsequent analysis of this mismatch lends empirical support to abandon a lack-of-income dimension.     

The methodology combination of a national foresight process in Germany

In September 2007, the Federal German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) launched a new foresight process which aimed at four specific targets. To achieve them, a tailor-made combination of methods was applied. This paper focuses on the concept design of the process and explains one of the methods — the future online survey — in more detail.The German Foresight Process of the BMBF delivers results on different levels: broader future fields as well as single future topics. Both kinds are relevant and selected according to a set of criteria. Some of the results of this foresight process will be directly integrated into national policy activities, others are just more indirectly filtered into the innovation system of the specific sectors in the country. The future fields are all cross-cutting issues based on science and technology. All of them are specifically knowledge dynamic fields.