Dienstleistungshandel: Ökonomische Effekte der Liberalisierung

Die Liberalisierung des internationalen Dienstleistungshandels birgt gro?e ?konomische Potentiale und k?nnte zu steigender Wohlfahrt in vielen L?ndern führen. Wer w?ren die Gewinner und Verlierer? Warum gibt es ungeachtet dieser Potentiale kaum Fortschritte bei den Verhandlungen über das Dienstleistungsabkommen (GATS) im Rahmen der Welthandelsorganisation (WTO)? Wie stehen die Chancen für die Zukunft? Eine Analyse der aktuellen Literatur zum Thema gibt Auskunft über prognostizierte ?konomische Effekte.     

International spillovers in global asset markets

The paper empirically estimates the financial transmission within and across bond and equity markets in the four largest global financial markets – the United States, the Euro area, Japan, and the United Kingdom. We argue that international bond and equity markets are highly interconnected both within and across asset classes in a globalized world, where the complex transmission process across various financial assets is not restricted to just the domestic market. This paper employs identification through generalized forecast error variance decompositions to estimate spillovers across four systemic markets in a Vector Autoregression (VAR) framework. We find that asset prices react most strongly to international shocks within the same asset class, but that there are also substantial international spillovers across asset classes. Rolling estimations analysis provides evidence that global asset markets have become more integrated and that the bilateral relationships change over time. Our results are robust to specifications that take into account the monetary policy stance and include foreign exchange markets.     

Knowledge transfer across permeable boundaries: An empirical study of clients’ decisions to involve management consultants

We investigate the relationship between the knowledge requirements of projects and clients’ decisions whether to procure services from external management consultants for the execution of these projects. Using data from interviews with client decision-makers regarding the execution of 86 projects, we find that knowledge requirements are strongly associated with the decision whether or not to involve external consultants. The results highlight the closeness of the relationships between clients and consultants, supporting Kitay and Wright's [Kitay, J., & Wright, C. (2004). Take the money and run? Organisational boundaries and consultants’ roles, The Service Industries Journal, 24(3) 1–18] view of the permeability of the boundaries between many client organizations and their consultants. The findings also confirm our expectation that clients use the services of external management consultants in order to procure functional or industry-specific knowledge which consultants can pool and apply efficiently across many projects.     

Turkey and the EU: On the costs and benefits of integrating a small but dynamic economy

Conclusions  Seen on the whole, one of the biggest economic challenges for Turkey is to make its recent macroeconomic stabilisation sustainable. Of utmost importance in this respect is a significant catch-up in quality of institutions and governance to the EU level. Although starting with a small GDP, Turkey could significantly contribute to high growth rates of the EU as a whole (as already aimed at by the Lisbon agenda). The analysis of Turkey's human resources has identified a large gap in human captial formation and its centra role for backlogs in convergence between Turkey and the EU. Hence, one important policy conclusion would be to link up pre-accession financial support with the accumulation of human capital instead of the usual support for standard infrastructure projects. Another example would be in the area of trade integration. For instance, enhancing the currently existing customs union with Turkey in the direction of free trade in services would generate benefits to Turkey and to the EU which should not be underestimated. Finally, one could imagine the implementation of joint and specific transition policies in the areas of energy, agriculture and education. If Turkey is able to stick strictly to its reform-oriented path of modernisation, nothing can prevent us from expecting enormous benefits from the integration of two regions with significantly different factor endowments — a straightforward economic insight not often well understood by politicians or the public.     

Real Impacts of Intra-European Exchange Rate Variability: A Case for EMU?

Intra-European exchange rate variability has significant economic costs. VAR causality tests show that higher short-run variability of exchange rates against other EU currencies was associated with higher unemployment, less employment, and lower investment for most EU member countries. Robustness tests show that this result holds up in the presence of both policy instruments that might have had an impact on exchange rate variability and cyclical variables that might have influenced labor demand. A model that incorporates the option value of waiting suggests that even short-term spikes in volatility exert a strong impact on investment and labor markets.     

Measuring fiscal spillovers in EMU and beyond: A Global VAR approach

This paper identifies and measures fiscal spillovers in the EU countries empirically using a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model. Our aim was to look at the sign and the absolute values of fiscal spillovers in a countrywise perspective and at the time profile (impulse response) of the impacts of fiscal shocks. We find moderate spillover effects of fiscal policy shocks originating in Germany and France. However, there is significant variation regarding the magnitude of the spillovers on individual destination countries and country clusters. Furthermore, we find some evidence that German or French fiscal spillovers are stronger on EMU than on non‐EMU countries.     

Reforms,Exchange Rates and Monetary Commitment: A Panel Analysis for OECD Countries

The paper investigates the link between monetary policy and structural reforms in open economies. We test three hypotheses: (a) the Calmfors hypothesis that the degree of reforms is higher in the case of autonomous policy and lower in the case of commitment, (b) the TINA hypothesis which implies a positive impact of a monetary policy rule on the extent of reforms, and (c) a third factors hypothesis. In our empirical analysis on panel data of 23 OECD countries from 1980–2000 we find little evidence for the Calmfors hypothesis, but evidence in favor of the TINA argument for labor market and regulatory reform.

Monetary policy and dividend growth in Germany: long-run structural modelling versus bounds testing approach

This study examines the long-run relationship between monetary policy and dividend growth in Germany. For this purpose, cointegration is tested for between both variables in the period 1974 to 2003. However, problems related to spurious regression arise from the mixed order of integration of the series used, from mutual causation between the variables and from the lack of a long-run relationship among the variables of the model. These problems are addressed by applying the bounds testing approach to cointegration in addition to a more standard long-run structural modelling approach. In principle, both procedures are capable of dealing with the controversial issue of the exogeneity of monetary policy vis-à-vis dividend growth. However, the structural modelling approach still leaves a certain degree of uncertainty about the integration properties of the interest rate and the dividend growth. Hence, one feels legitimized to refer to the bounds testing procedure and to conclude that in the longer term short-term rates drive stock returns but not vice versa.     

How the ECB and the US Fed set interest rates

Monetary policies of the European Central Bank (ECB) and US Fed can be characterized by ‘Taylor rules’, that is both central banks seem to be setting rates by taking into account the ‘output gap’ and inflation. We also set up and tested Taylor rules which incorporate money growth and the euro–dollar exchange rate, thereby improving the ‘fit’ between actual and Taylor rule based rates. In general, Taylor rules appear to be a much better way of describing Fed policy than ECB policy. Simulations suggest that the ECB's short-term interest rates have been at a much lower level in the last 2 years compared with what a Taylor rule would suggest.