https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/18406 2026-05-01T06:35:03Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19756 Beggar-thyself or beggar-thy-neighbour? The welfare effects of monetary policy Tervala, Juha; Engler, Philipp This paper examines whether monetary expansion is a beggar- thyself or beggar- thy-neighbour policy. Obstfeld and Rogo¤ (1995) show that monetary expansion under producer currency pricing in- creases domestic and foreign overall welfare, in cases where the cross- country substitutability is high. If the cross-country substitutability is low, then monetary expansion is a beggar- thyself policy that re- duces domestic welfare and increases foreign welfare (Corsetti & Pe- senti 2001; Tille 2001). In this paper, we will show that regardless of whether the cross-country substitutability is high or low, monetary expansion is always a beggar-thyself policy in the short run. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/19730 Central bank communication and the perception of monetary policy by financial market experts Schmidt, Sandra; Nautz, Dieter This paper investigates why financial market experts misperceive the interest rate policy of the European Central Bank (ECB). Assuming a Taylor-rule-type reaction function of the ECB, we use qualitative survey data on expectations about the future interest rate, inflation, and output to discover the sources of in- dividual interest rate forecast errors. Based on a panel random coefficient model, we show that financial experts have systematically misperceived the ECB's in- terest rate rule. However, although experts tend to overestimate the impact of inflation on future interest rates, perceptions of monetary policy have become more accurate since clarification of the ECB's monetary policy strategy in May 2003\. We find that this improved communication has reduced disagreement over the ECB's response to expected inflation during the financial crisis. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/20055 Charitable giving in the German welfare state Bönke, Timm; Massarrat-Mashhadi, Nima; Sielaff, Christian Governmental activities in welfare states influence private charitable giving predominantly in two ways: (1) government spending on the provision of public goods may cause crowding out of private charitable contributions; and (2) tax incentives may boost private charitable giving. For a rich sample of German income tax returns, we estimate elasticities of charitable giving regarding tax incentives, income and governmental spending. Using censored quantile regression, we are able to derive results for different points of the underlying distribution of charitable giving. Assuming a world with impure altruism (Andreoni 1990), we find evidence for impurely altruistic giving behaviour. Taking crowding out into account, tax deductibility of charitable giving suffices to foster private giving to offset foregone tax revenues. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/20128 Chinese monetary policy and the dollar peg Reade, J. James; Volz, Ulrich This paper investigates to what extent Chinese monetary policy is constrained by the dollar peg. To this end, we use a cointegration framework to examine whether Chinese interest rates are driven by the Fed’s policy. In a second step, we estimate a monetary model for China, in which we include also other monetary policy tools besides the central bank interest rate, namely reserve requirement ratios and open market operations. Our results suggest China has been relatively successful in isolating its monetary policy from the US policy and that the interest rate tool has not been effectively made use of. We therefore conclude that by employing capital controls and relying on other instruments than the interest rate China has been able to exert relatively autonomous monetary policy. 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z