According to current regulation, European banks can apply zero risk weights to sovereign exposures in their balance sheet, irrespective of the assigned rating. We show that a zero risk weighting of sovereign bonds has implications by distorting banks' asset allocation decisions. Due to the lower...

The analysis of the Equity Risk Premium (ERP) and the research efforts aimed at solving the Equity Premium Puzzle (Mehra and Prescott 1985), are still widely discussed in the economic and financial literature. The purpose of this paper is to show that differences in the ERP between developed and...

This paper examines the welfare implications of rising temperatures. Using a standard VAR, we empirically show that a temperature shock has a sizable, negative and statistically significant impact on TFP, output, and labor productivity. We rationalize these findings within a production economy...

We shed new light on the macroeconomic effects of rising temperatures. In the data, a shock to global temperature dampens expenditures in research and development (R&D). We rationalize this empirical evidence within a stochastic endogenous growth model, featuring temperature risk and growth...

Konjunkturprognosen sind für die Planung von Unternehmen und des Staats eine wichtige Bezugs- und Argumentationsgrundlage. Der Artikel zeigt anhand des Beispiels der Ausrüstungsinvestitionen die Herangehensweise bei der Prognose eines Verwendungsaggregats des deutschen BIP. Die Prognose...

Energy efficiency improvements are a key component on the road towards a carbonneutral economy. We identify the development of energy efficiency in the data and show that in recent decades it has increased at the aggregate level. At the sectoral level, however, the development in energy...

A canonical two country-two good model with standard preferences does not address three classic international macroeconomic puzzles as well as two well-known asset pricing puzzles. Specifically, under financial autarky, it does not account for the high real exchange rate (RER) volatility...

A canonical two country-two good model with standard preferences does not address three classic international macroeconomic puzzles as well as two well-known asset pricing puzzles. Specifically, under financial autarky, it does not account for the high real exchange rate (RER) volatility...

We introduce long-run investment productivity risk in a two-sector production economy to explain the joint behavior of macroeconomic quantities and asset prices. Long-run productivity risk in both sectors, for which we provide economic and empirical justification, acts as a substitute for shocks...

Recent empirical evidence suggests that during the last years fiscally weak European countries significantly cut their R&D budgets in an effort to reduce their deficit, according to the spirit of the Fiscal Compact. We propose a general equilibrium model that endogenously captures the trade-off...