Wer ist von Altersarmut bedroht?

Which groups have particularly low pension entitlements and are therefore most at risk of poverty in old age? Participation in the labour force for some individuals may be interrupted for a variety of reasons, including education, unemployment, raising children or caring for relatives, all of which result in low pensions. Those who are most at risk of poverty in old age are individuals with low earnings, frequent or long periods of unemployment, and single, unemployed mothers. In other words, those impoverished while young are most likely to remain impoverished into old age. Poverty among the elderly should therefore be addressed with the same instruments with which poverty is being fought in earlier stages of life, rather than through changes in the statutory pension insurance system.     

Kolonialfrage und Neuordnung der Weltwirtschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The macroeconomic effects of the ECB’s evolving QE programme: a model-based analysis

This paper analyses the macroeconomic effects of the European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme in its initial version and subsequent modifications under the lens of a dynamic macroeconomic model, which includes assets of different types and maturity, and explicitly introduces asset purchases of long-term bonds (held by euro area and non-euro area residents) by the central bank. With imperfect substitutability between asset classes, portfolio rebalancing in the context of quantitative easing (QE) affects bond yields, stock prices, the exchange rate and the private sector’s saving decision. QE as announced in January 2015 generates 0.4% effective euro depreciation and raises real GDP in the euro area by 0.2% and prices by 0.3% by 2017 in the model. The subsequent extensions of the QE programme (extension in time and increase in volume) more than double the medium-term output and inflation effects according to the simulations.