All explorations of the future of the Euro show serious risks for its survival in the present form. The road map of the Five EU Presidents presented in 2015 is far from sufficient to reduce the risks of the Euro zone falling apart by Brexit type developments or new economic shocks. The EU...

Deutschlands Zukunftsfähigkeit ist im internationalen Vergleich erkennbar zurückgefallen. Zentrale Ursache ist die Schwäche des Private Equity Kapitalmarkts. Der Handlungsbedarf lässt sich klar definieren, diese Schwäche zu beseitigen. Es bedarf nur politischer Akteure, die sich diesen...

A tontine provides a mortality driven, age-increasing payout structure through the pooling of mortality. Because a tontine does not entail any guarantees, the payout structure of a tontine is determined by the pooling of individual characteristics of tontinists. Therefore, the surrender decision...

We study how occupations shape individual and aggregate retirement behavior. First, we document large differences in individual retirement ages across occupations in U.S. data. We then show that retirement behavior among European workers is strongly correlated with U.S. occupational retirement...

Integrated capital markets facilitate risk sharing across countries. Lower home bias in financial investments is an indicator of risk sharing. We highlight that existing indicators of equity home bias in the literature suffer from incomplete coverage because they consider only listed equities....

We discuss past performance and future challenges for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We highlight the successful convergence process of those countries, not least thanks to their integration into European and global value chains. As the external environment changes, so...

This paper compares fully-funded (FF) and pay-as-you-go (paygo) pension plans in a Keynesian framework for an economy with overlapping generations and excess capacity. The model addresses both short/medium-run equilibria and steady-states. Income distribution and class conflict, two crucial...

This paper explores whether different funding structures-including the source, instrument, currency, and counterparty location of funding-affected the extent of financial stress experienced in various countries and sectors during the Covid-19 spread in early 2020. We measure financial stress...

With a view to establishing a Capital Markets Union (CMU), efforts to integrate (private) capital markets and private risk-sharing in the European Union are underway. However, the single (capital) market will be burdened by a perennial potential threat to sovereign bond market stability in the...