The extensive public support measures for the financial sector have been key for the management of the current financial crisis. This paper gives a detailed description of the measures taken by central banks and governments and attempts a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of such...

The extensive public support measures for the financial sector have been key for the management of the current financial crisis. This paper gives a detailed description of the measures taken by central banks and governments and attempts a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of such...

This paper analyzes the effect of the business cycle on the regulatory capital buffer of German savings and cooperative banks in the period 19932003. The capital buffer is found to fluctuate anticyclically over the business cycle. The fluctuation is stronger for savings banks than for...

The extensive public support measures for the financial sector have been key for the management of the current financial crisis. This paper gives a detailed description of the measures taken by central banks and governments and attempts a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of such...

This paper provides a theoretical and quantitative analysis of various types of wellknown employment subsidies. Two important questions are addressed: (i) How should employment subsidies be targeted? (ii) How large should the subsidies be? We consider measures involving targeting workers with...

This paper addresses the question of why high unemployment rates tend to persist even after their proximate causes have been reversed (e.g., after wages relative to productivity have fallen). We suggest that the longer people are unemployed, the greater is their cumulative likelihood of falling...

This paper explores the influence of wage and price staggering on monetary persistence. First, our analysis indicates that the degree of monetary persistence generated by wage vis-à-vis price staggering depends on the relative competitiveness of the labor and product markets. We show that the...

This paper proposes a new approach to evaluate the macroeconomic effects of the “Hartz IV” reform, which reduced the generosity of long-term unemployment benefits. We propose a model with different unemployment durations, where the reform initiates both a partial effect and an equilibrium...