News Archive

In recent decades, China has risen to become Germany’s most important trading partner for international trade in goods. Has Germany become too dependent from trade with China? A new Policy Report shows that China plays an important, but by no means dominant role for Germany as a supplier or destination market. However, 46% of German firms in the manufacturing sector state that they currently depend on important intermediate inputs from China. Of those, almost half of the firms are planning to reduce imports from China in the future.

This article discusses the economic effects of a potential cut-off of the German economy from Russian energy imports. We show that the effects are likely to be substantial but manageable. In the short run, a stop of Russian energy imports would lead to a GDP decline in range between 0.5% and 3% (cf. the GDP decline in 2020 during the pandemic was 4.5%).

This Policy Brief analyses the long-run effects of an economic decoupling between the political West (i.e. the EU, the US and their allies) and the East (first and foremost Russia and China).  A decoupling of Russia from the US and its allies would have much more severe long-term impacts for real income in Russia (minus 9.7 percent) than in the US and its allies (minus 0.2 percent). The reason for the uneven distribution of costs lies primarily in Russia’s low economic importance compared with the US and its allies.

This paper conceptualizes an appropriate path for fiscal policy starting from the early phase of the pandemic up to the final transition to a post-pandemic new normal. Using this yardstick, it assesses the initial fiscal response of Member States. It exploits fiscal projections and program data to analyze the adjustment to the economic recovery. For loan guarantee and short-time work schemes, it identifies program-specific parameters that improve target precision and identifies examples of more and less convincing program designs.

The Great Financial Crisis caused a deep recession and led to very large public deficits. When financial market tensions erupted, many European countries were forced to reduce their deficits. This ‘austerity’ is often credited with the disappointingly slow recovery during the years after the financial crisis. One reason for such a slow recovery could have been that the impact of a reduction in the fiscal deficits is larger than anticipated during a recession, especially if it is accompanied by financial market tensions.