The German economy navigates troubled waters. The catch-up process in the contact-intensive service industries is continuing at a fast pace and companies in the manufacturing sector are sitting on wellfilled order books. However, high inflation is reducing the purchasing power of disposable...

The German economy is leaving the recession behind. According to leading indicators, GDP will continue to rise following the increase in the first quarter. As the year progresses, real disposable income and exports will stimulate economic activity. In addition, the effects of tighter monetary...

The outlook for the German economy has deteriorated over the last month. Although, the high level of sick leave and supply bottlenecks have noticeably eased, GDP has not yet returned to an expansionary course. Business surveys indicate that economic momentum will remain weak in the second half...

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks' lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms' credit constraints at two...

We conduct face-to-face interviews with bank CEOs to classify 397 banks across 21 countries as either relationship or transaction lenders. We then use the geographic coordinates of these banks' branches and of 14,100 businesses to analyze how the lending techniques of banks in the vicinity of...