The observation, analysis and forecasting of inflationary trends is of particular interest to all economic agents -not just to institutions with monetary policy tasks. Almost all central banks have specified a price target as the final goal of monetary policy, for example, and some central banks...

This paper introduces the Deutsche Bundesbank's new procedure for estimating the term structure of interest rates. It describes the basic methodological approaches used (Nelson and Siegel (1987) and Svensson (1994)) and some fundamental concepts which are important for estimating and...

Die Beobachtung, Analyse und Prognose der Inflationsentwicklung ist nicht nur für Institutionen mit geldpolitischen Aufgaben, sondern für alle Wirtschaftsteilnehmer von besonderem Interesse. So haben fast alle Zentralbanken ein Preisziel als Endziel der Geldpolitik vorgegeben und einige...

This study empirically investigates for the case of Germany the following question, recently posed by Feldstein (1996): "lf the true and fully anticipated rate of inflation has stabilized at a low level, i.e. two per cent, is the gain from reducing inflation to zero worth the sacrifice in output...

The unfavourable balance of foreign direct investment plays a major role in the ongoing debate on the quality of Gennany as a business location. High direct investment outflows and low inflows compared with the United Kingdom and France are often seen as a sign of weakness of the Gennan...

The unfavourable balance of foreign direct investment plays a major role in the ongoing debate on the quality of Germany as a business location. High direct investment outflows and low inflows compared with the United Kingdom and France are often seen as a sign of weakness of Germany as a...

The purpose of the present paper is twofold. First, it describes zero-coupon yield curve estimates for Germany from September 1972 to February 1996 using a variety of curve-fitting procedures. Second, these estimates are tested for their information content regarding future inflation