The massive decline in international trade in 2008/09 is often attributed to the global deterioration in financial conditions after the bankruptcy of a US investment bank, Lehman Brothers. This paper examines the association between external finance and firm activity in Germany in more detail....

type="main" xml:id="twec12133-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This paper estimates the exporter premium in bank lending. We examine credit relationships in Germany, covering all loans of more than 1.5 million euro over the period from 2005 to 2010. Having controlled for a wide range of other firm and bank...</p>

Policy makers are interested in fostering economic growth and employment. Therefore, it is important to know how to boost innovation in an effective way. This paper investigates whether entrepreneurs with technical education are more innovative in high-tech industries than economists. The main...

This paper investigates whether entrepreneurs with technical education are more innovative in high-tech industries than economists. The main contribution to the literature is in using the type of education as main explanatory variable for innovation. To analyze this question, the KfW/ZEW...

Foreign exchange rates, asset prices and capital movements are expected to be closely related to each other as international capital markets become more and more integrated. This paper provides new empirical evidence from an index of exchange-rate adjusted cross-country asset price ratios, which...

This Kiel Policy Brief demonstrates the calculation of a new stock market index informing about the price competitiveness of a country's assets vis-à-vis its foreign competitors. In line with the portfolio balance approach we empirically identify net foreign holdings of a country's assets as...

Global factors are becoming increasingly important as a cause of international capital fl ows. It is nearly impossible for some countries to protect themselves from outside infl uences on their fi nancial markets. This paper investigates the extent to which various global factors such as stock...

[Conclusion] It is being increasingly held in the literature that, in a globalizing world, flexible exchange rates are no longer enough to insulate an economy against external shocks. Our empirical results corroborate the observation that, in the past few years, global factors have had a crucial...