We show that, since the inception of energy futures markets, prices have on average exhibited backwardation. Normal backwardation has also been the norm, but, because of the low power of the standard tests, most researchers have concluded that the unbiased expectations model cannot be rejected....

Im Laufe des Jahres 1993 war die Metallgesellschaft Refining & Marketing (MGRM), eine US-amerikanische Tochtergesellschaft der Metallgesellschaft AG, in großem Umfang die Verpflichtung eingegangen, langfristig Öl zu Festpreisen zu liefern. Das dadurch entstehende Preisrisiko sollte über...

The wage effects of fixed-term contracts (FTCs) are analysed with the GSOEP for West Germany. Different estimators which take into account selection bias are used. It is shown that propensity score matching estimators which are usually applied for the evaluation of active labour market...

The components of GDP (residential investment, durables, nondurables, equipment and software, and business structures) display a pronounced lead-lag structure. We investigate the implications of this lead-lag structure for the cross-section of asset returns. We find that the leading GDP...

Based on individual expectations from the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we construct a real-time proxy for expected term premium changes on long-term bonds. We empirically investigate the relation of these bond term premium expectations with expectations about key macroeconomic variables...

There is a growing empirical literature studying whether fiscal rules reduce borrowing costs. Nevertheless, it remains an open question whether these rules are effective genuinely or just because they mirror fiscal preferences of politicians and voters. In our analysis of European bond spreads,...

European banks are exposed to a substantial amount of risky sovereign debt. The "missing bank capital" resulting from the zero-risk weight exemption for European banks for European sovereign debt amplifies the co-movement between sovereign CDS spreads and facilitates cross-border...

This paper examines to what extent marital sorting affects cross-sectional earnings inequality in Germany over the past three decades, while explicitly taking into account labor supply choices. Using rich micro data, the observed distribution of couples' earnings is compared to a counterfactual...