There is a symmetrical debate in two Euro area core countries: in France about the restrictive fiscal policy of Germany, leading to a huge external surplus, in Germany about the insufficient compliance with fiscal rules and the lack of structural reforms in France. What are the real causes of...

This paper investigates the empirical significance of push- and pull factors of different types of capital flows - FDI, portfolio and "others" (including loans) - to emerging market and developing economies. Based on an extensive quarterly mixed time-series panel dataset for 32 emerging market...

We investigate whether the macroeconomic effects of government spending shocks vary with the level of uncertainty. Using postwar US data and a Self-Exciting Interacted VAR (SEIVAR) model, we find that fiscal spending has positive output effects in tranquil times but is contractionary during...

Very recently, the European Institutions made progress on the Capital Markets Union (CMU). The CMU is part of the so called "Juncker-Plan" which aims to boost investment across Europe. In our contribution we focus on retirement savings and investment for growth aspects of the CMU. We find that...

For more than two decades now, current-account imbalances are a crucial issue in the international policy debate as they threaten the stability of the world economy. More recently, the government debt crisis of the European Union shows that internal current account imbalances inside a currency...