1. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    The Long-Term Costs of Government Surveillance: Insights from Stasi Spying in East Germany

    Despite the prevalence of government surveillance systems around the world, causal evidence on their social and economic consequences is lacking. Using county-level variation in the number of Stasi informers…

  2. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Trends in the German Income Distribution: 2005/06 to 2010/11

    We analyze the potential influence of a number of factors on the distribution of equivalized net incomes in Germany over the period 2005/2006 to 2010/11. While income inequality considerably increased in the…

  3. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Capital Markets Union in Europe: Why Other Unions Must Lead the Way

    Capital Markets Union in Europe with fully integrated capital markets across member countries can only work when the status of member country sovereign bonds as risk-free assets is restored. Banking Union and…

  4. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Lender of Last Resort versus Buyer of Last Resort – The Impact of the European Central Bank Actions on the Bank-Sovereign Nexus

    In summer 2011, elevated sovereign risk in Eurozone peripheral countries increased the solvency risk of Eurozone banks, precipitating a run on their short-term debt. We assess the effectiveness of different…

  5. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Wall Street Crosses Memory Lane: How Witnessed Returns Affect Professionals' Expected Returns

    Witnessing stock-market history in the making creates a vivid story, but does not provide valuable information. However, finance professionals extrapolate from personally witnessed returns, which we show by…

  6. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Job Creation Schemes in Turbulent Times

    This paper analyzes the impact of job creation schemes (JCS) on job search outcomes in the context of the turbulent East German labor market in the aftermath of the German reunification. High job destruction…

  7. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Capital Shortfalls of European Banks since the Start of the Banking Union

    Since the start of the Banking Union in November 2014, European banks lost nearly half their market capitalization. Important risks in bank balance sheets are still unaccounted for requiring an even larger…

  8. Discussion and Working Paper // 2016

    Introducing the “Leverage Ratio” in Assessing the Capital Adequacy of European Banks

    The European Banking Authority (EBA) disclosed the effect of losses in a stress test on bank capital ratios on 29 July 2016. We assess the capital adequacy of these banks based on these disclosures and using two…