Rating agencies transform data on the political, economic and financial situation of a country into a simple signal for investors. In doing so, they facilitate primarily cross-border investment. Some empirical studies have pinpointed ratings as a cause for the widening interest gap compared to a...

Premium earnings within the Austrian insurance sector experienced the extreme cyclical movements taking place over the past few years only weakly. After stagnating during the crisis-ridden year 2009, premiums displayed growth in 2010 that did not keep up with the expansion of nominal GDP....

The premium income of Austria's private insurance industry stagnated in 2009; however, given the economic decline, income remained relatively robust. Nevertheless, with zero growth, 2009 remained one of the worst years in the recent past. Given the decline in nominal GDP (–3.1 percent), insurance...

Based on a study conducted for the European Parliament, Bonn 2011 (144 pages)

By selecting firms with high growth and profitability potential, investors of risk capital play an important role for corporate innovation and financing. Yet, the Austrian risk capital market is underdeveloped. Investment in venture capital and for growth of firms amounted to a modest 0.04...

The western European private insurance market continued to suffer during 2012 from the repercussions of the financial market and sovereign debt crisis. The life insurance branch saw premium volumes decline, while non-life insurance business contracted in the EU periphery countries. Even in...

Recent institutional changes in the European Union have strengthened the original Stability and Growth Pact by negotiating the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union ("fiscal compact"). The cyclically-adjusted budget balance is the main quantitative...

In 2013, Austria's economy grew by just 0.4 percent, the slowest growth rate since the recession of 2008-09 when overall production had shrunk by 3.8 percent. Both the investment volume and private household consumption declined in real terms. Unemployment rose sharply to a new height of 7.6...

This paper provides an economic assessment of export credit guarantee commitments by the Austrian export credit agency, using firm-level data on a cross-section of 178 Austrian exporting firms for the year 2008. In a first step, we estimate the relative importance of various determinants of...

With a modest increase of premium revenues by 1.1 percent in 2011, growth of Austria's private insurance companies remained below that of nominal GDP (+5 percent). Performance within the sector was uneven: while premium revenues in property-liability and accident insurance rose by a hefty 7.2...