Opinion
Eastern Germany has suffered from three decades of deindustrialization since the collapse of communism, largely because of poor policy decisions. But by becoming an electric-vehicle powerhouse, the region can help to drive Europe's green transition and secure its own future prosperity.
Blog Post
The spectacular collapse of Wirecard AG should serve as a wake-up call for the European Union on the need to pool the relevant supervisory mandates at EU level.
Opinion
The German Constitutional Court's ruling on the ECB's asset purchase programme is open to much criticism but it can hardly be blamed for raising an important question.
Blog Post
Despite progress in recent years towards a single banking policy framework in the euro area – a banking union – much of the German banking system has remained partly sheltered from uniform rules and disciplines that now apply to nearly all the area’s other banks. The resulting differences in regulatory regimes could generate vulnerabilities in the still-incomplete banking union, which is being tested in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Opinion
The head of German Finance has written in the Financial Times defending the need to deepen the banking union, now London is about to leave
Opinion
Die deutsche Industriepolitik folgt bisher keiner klaren Strategie, sondern ist von Unternehmensinteressen getrieben. Das ist der falsche Weg.
Opinion
Although national industrial policies have a bad reputation, there is a strong case for government support to sectors that will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence. In this regard, the German government’s plan to promote production of electric-car batteries may accelerate an industrial renaissance in Europe.
Opinion
Eastern Germans vote, think, and feel differently than western Germans do, as the results of the September 1 regional elections make clear. To help tackle the underlying economic causes of this divide, the federal government should introduce incentives to encourage foreign investment in the east of the country.
Opinion
Recession! This is the new worry in Europe and the US. A simple look at google trends shows that in Germany, France and the US, search interest for recession peaked in the last weeks. In Italy, the peak already occurred end of January. Whether a recession is actually occurring is difficult to gauge in real time. But there can be no doubt that significant risks such as the trade war and no-deal Brexit exist.
Blog Post
An on-going research project is seeking to quantify and analyse printed media discourses about Europe over the decades since the end of the Second World War. A first snapshot screened more than 2.8 million articles in Le Monde between 1944 and 2018. In this second instalment we carry out an analogous exercise on a dataset of more the 500 thousand articles from two German weekly magazines: Die Zeit and Der Spiegel. We also report on the on-going work to refine the quantitative methodology.
Blog Post
The authors assess whether the European Commission's actions towards Italy since September 2018 have had a visible impact on the spread between Italian sovereign-bond yields and those of Germany, and particularly whether the Commission’s warnings have acted as a ‘signalling device’ for bond-market participants that it might be difficult for Italy to obtain the support of the ESM or the ECB’s OMT programme if needed.
Blog Post
A proposal in Berlin to ban increases in rent for the next five years sparked intense debate in Germany. Similar policies to the Mietendeckel are currently being discussed in London and NYC. All three proposals reflect and raise similar concerns – the increase in per-capita incomes is not keeping pace with increases in rents, but will a cap do more harm than good? We review recent views on the matter.
