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Real estate markets are pivotal to financial stability given their dual role as the underlying asset of crucial financial products in financial systems, such as mortgage loans and asset-backed securities, and the primary source of household wealth alike. As such, they also play traditionally a crucial role for the transmission of monetary policy. Imbalances and sudden corrections in real estate markets have been the root cause of many financial crises over the last decades. But whereas some national, often survey-based indicators of real estate prices are provided by central banks and statistical offices, a comprehensive collection of purchase prices, rents, and proxies for the liquidity of European real estate markets is lacking. The IWH European Real Estate Index (EREI) seeks to fill this void for residential property. This technical report describes the gathering and processing of sale and rental prices for properties in 18 European countries. We provide the general scrapeing step in the section before describing country-specific details for each country in separated sub-sections.

We use a new database on European real estate purchase and rental prices - the IWH European Real Estate Index - to document the relationship between staggered COVID-19 dynamics and real estate prices in 14 EU countries between January 2020 and December 2021. For most countries, we find no statistically significant response of monthly purchase and rental prices due to an increase of regional COVID-19 cases. For the UK we find that more COVID-19 cases depressed both purchase and rental prices significantly, but the economic magnitude of effects was mild during this sample period. In contrast, rents in Italy increased in response to hiking COVID-19 cases, illustrating the importance to consider heterogeneous crisis patterns across the EU when designing policies. Overall, COVID-19 dynamics did not affect real estate values significantly during the pandemic, thereby mitigating potential financial stability concerns via a mortgage lending channel at the time.

We investigate firm outcomes after a major flood in Germany in 2013. We robustly find that firms located in the disaster regions have significantly higher turnover, lower leverage, and higher cash in the period after 2013. We provide evidence that the effects stem from firms that already experienced a similar major disaster in 2002. Overall, our results document a positive net effect on firm performance in the direct aftermath of a natural disaster.

Die Aufdeckung manipulierter Abgaswerte bei Dieselautos des Herstellers Volkswagen (VW) durch die amerikanischen Behörden im Jahr 2015 brachte einen der größten Unternehmensskandale Deutschlands zutage. Dieser Skandal blieb nicht ohne Konsequenzen. Martin Winterkorn trat von seinem Amt als Vorstandsvorsitzender und Michael Horn als Chef von Volkswagen in den USA zurück. Viele VW-Kunden klagten gegen den Konzern, und in deutschen Großstädten wurde über Dieselfahrverbote diskutiert. Doch gab es auch eine Reaktion auf Konsumentenseite, also seitens der Autokäufer? Und wenn ja, spielen hier gesellschaftskulturelle Unterschiede wie zum Beispiel religiöse Prägung eine Rolle? Diesen Fragen geht ein im letzten Jahr erschienenes Arbeitspapier des IWH nach. Die empirische Analyse beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob Konsumenten nach dem VW-Skandal ihr Kaufverhalten stärker anpassen, wenn das gesellschaftliche Umfeld protestantisch geprägt ist. In der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zeigt sich, dass Protestanten mehr Wert auf eine Überwachung und Durchsetzung von Regeln legen, weshalb die Autoren von dieser Religionsgruppe eine ausgeprägtere Reaktion auf den VW-Skandal erwarten. Das Hauptergebnis der Studie legt dann genau diesen Schluss nahe: In den deutschen Regionen, in denen die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung dem protestantischen Glauben angehört, kam es zu signifikant höheren Rückgängen bei VW-Neuzulassungen infolge des VW-Skandals. Der Effekt ist umso stärker, je länger die Region durch protestantische Werte geprägt ist. Offenbar können bestimmte gesellschaftskulturelle Ausprägungen wie Religion und deren Normen ein Korrektiv für Verfehlungen von Unternehmen darstellen und somit verzögerte oder ausbleibende Maßnahmen von Politikern und Regulierern zum Teil ersetzen.

This study investigates if the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) distorted price competition in U.S. banking. Political indicators reveal bailout expectations after 2009, manifested as beliefs about the predicted probability of receiving equity support relative to failing during the TARP disbursement period. In addition, the TARP affected the competitive conduct of unsupported banks after the program stopped in the fourth quarter of 2009. The risk premium required by depositors was lower, and loan rates were higher for banks with higher bailout expectations. The interest margins of unsupported banks increased in the immediate aftermath of the TARP disbursement but not after 2010. These effects are economically very small though. No effects emerged for loan or deposit growth, which suggests that protected banks did not increase their market shares at the expense of less protected banks.

Little is known about how banks' domestic funding networks affect the transmission of capital flows reversals to the real economy. Our robust results show that a foreign funding shock to banks in Brazil negatively affects lending by their regional branches, especially when they are subjected to funding fragmentation. This effect triggers a sizable drop in credit and job creation at the municipal level. Our findings suggest that despite substitution possibilities across banks and firms, banks' funding networks matter to explain the distributional effects of foreign financial shocks.

Syndicated loan data provided by DealScan has become an essential input in banking research over recent years. This data is rich enough to answer urging questions on bank lending, e.g., in the presence of financial shocks or climate change. However, many data options raise the question of how to choose the estimation sample. We employ a standard regression framework analyzing bank lending during the financial crisis to study how conventional but varying usages of DealScan affect the estimates. The key finding is that the direction of coefficients remains relatively robust. However, statistical significance seems to depend on the data and sampling choice.

We investigate the impact of the French 2012 financial transaction tax on trading activity, volatility, and price efficiency measured by first-order autocorrelation. We extend empirical research by analysing anticipation and reallocation effects. In addition, we consider measures for long-run volatility and first-order autocorrelation that have not been explored yet. We find robust evidence for anticipation effects before the effective date of the French FTT. Controlling for short-run effects, we only find weak evidence for a long-run reduction of trading activity due to the French FTT. Thus, the main impact of the French FTT on trading activity is short-run. We find stronger reactions of low-liquidity treated stocks and a reallocation of trading activity to high-liquidity stocks participating in the Supplemental Liquidity Provider Programme, which is both in line with liquidity clientele effects. Finally, we find weak evidence for a persistent volatility reduction but no indication for a significant FTT impact on price efficiency measured by first-order autocorrelation.