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Bis zum Jahr 2030 werden die Unternehmen in Deutschland mit rund 6 Millionen Erwerbsfähigen im Alter von 20 bis 64 Jahren weniger auskommen müssen. Gleichzeitig wird die Zahl der Menschen über 64 Jahren um rund 5,5 Millionen wachsen. Die Kosten für das Renten- und Gesundheitssystem steigen, während die Zahl der Beitragszahlerinnen und Beitragszahler zurückgeht. Viele Menschen glauben nicht mehr, dass sie von der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung ein ausreichendes Alterseinkommen werden beziehen können. Diese Befürchtungen sind keineswegs grundlos. Der demografische Wandel braucht daher politische Entscheidungen, die Sicherheit und Fairness im Auge haben. Die Demografie-Kommission der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung legt in dieser Publikation entsprechende Empfehlungen vor.

In this paper our main aim is to quantify the role that housing collateral plays for the monetary transmission mechanism. Furthermore, we want to explore the implications of the increase in household indebtedness, and specifically the loan-to-value ratio, in the last two decades. We set up a two sector DSGE model with production of goods and housing. Households can only borrow by using their houses as collateral. The structure of the model closely follows Iacoviello and Neri (2010). To be able to do quantitatively relevant exercises we estimate the model using Bayesian methods on Swedish data for 1986q1-2008q3. We quantify the reinforcement of the monetary transmission mechanism that housing used as collateral implies in the presence of nominal loan contracts. This mechanism functions through the effects of the interest rate on house prices as well as on inflation and thereby the real value of nominal debt. This component of the monetary transmission mechanism becomes stronger the higher the loan-to-value ratio is. A change in the maximum loan-to-value ratio from 85% to 95%, all else being equal, implies that the effect of a monetary policy shock is increased by 4% for inflation, 8% for GDP and 24% for consumption. We conclude that to properly understand the monetary transmission mechanism and its changing nature over time, we need to take into account the effects of housing related collateral constraints.

In this paper we undertake an out-of-sample evaluation of the ability of a model to forecast the Swedish Krona's real and nominal effective exchange rate, using a cointegrating relation between the real exchange rate, relative output, terms of trade and net foreign assets (or alternatively the trade balance). The cointegrating relation is derived from a theoretical model of the New Open Economy Macroeconomics type. The forecasting performance of our estimated vector error correction model is quite good once the dynamics of the model have been augmented with an interest rate differential.

In this paper we simultaneously estimate the real exchange rates between the Swedish Krona, the US Dollar and the Euro. A prime candidate for explaining the exchange rate movements is relative potential output. Since this variable is unobservable, cyclical and potential output are estimated in an unobserved components framework together with a Phillips curve. Our empirical exchange rate results are in line with theory. Increases in relative potential output and the terms of trade strengthen the exchange rate, while a relative increase of the fraction of middle-aged people in the population and budget deficits depreciate the exchange rate. The estimates suggest that the recent deterioration of the relative budget situation for the US versus Europe is a prime candidate for explaining the USD/EUR exchange rate change lately.

We set up and estimate a structural unobserved components open economy model for the rate of unemployment and the real exchange rate in Sweden. This approach enables us to simultaneously determine changes in both cyclical and equilibrium rates. Our results show that the Natural Rate/NAIRU has increased by approximately 1.5 percentage points since the 1970s, driven by a depreciation of the equilibrium exchange rate, changes in taxes, active labor market policies and demographic factors. Thus, the results indicate that the dramatic changes in the Swedish unemployment rate during the 1990s mainly was a cyclical phenomenon. After five devaluations in the 1970s and early 1980s the krona was allowed to float on 19 November 1992. The depreciating trend continued during the floating rate period. Our model successfully explains this development as being driven by changes in terms of trade, demographics and structural government deficits. The change in the rate of inflation is found to be quite sensitive to the unemployment gap. An increase in cyclical unemployment by 1 percentage point will reduce inflation by approximately 0.6 percentage points within a year.

Tentative evidence suggests that the empiricalfailure of uncovered interest parity (UIP) is confined to short-term interest rates. Tests of UIP for long-term interest rates are however hampered by various data problems. By focusing on short investments in long-term bonds, these data problems can be avoided. We study the relationship between the US dollar - Deutsch Mark exchange rate and German and American bond rates. The hypothesis that expected returns to investments in bonds denominated in the two currencies are equal cannot be rejected. This result is not simply due to low power as the beta-coefficients are close to unity. For the corresponding short-term interest rates, the typical finding of a large and significantly negative beta-coefficient is confirmed.

In this paper we evaluate the out of sample forecasting performance of a large number of models belonging to a popular class of exchange rate models. Forecasts of the Swedish nominal effective exchange rate for the period 1980-2000 are performed using both single equation estimation and VAR approaches. The forecast horizons used were from 1 to 12 quarters. None of the models evaluated could convincingly outperform a random walk alternative.

This paper examines how various monetary policy signals such as repo rate changes, inflation reports, speeches, and minutes from monetary policy meetings affect the term structure of interest rates. We find that unexpected movements in the short end of the yield curve are mainly driven by unexpected changes in the repo rate, while speeches is a more important determinant for the longer interest rates. Hence, we conclude that central bank communication is an essential part of the conduct of monetary policy.

The contribution of this paper is to derive a bivariate distribution for inflation and output uncertainty with a well-defined role for subjective judgements. The marginal distributions for inflation and output growth are derived from uncertainty in the macro variables that are deemed to be important for future inflation and output growth. The uncertainty in the macro variables is based on their historical standard deviations, but we allow these to be subjectively adjusted if there is reason to be more or less uncertain than historically. We also allow for a subjective assessment of the balance of risk, i.e. whether the distributions are symmetric or not. Given the marginal distributions for inflation and output growth we derive a bivariate distribution using the translation method. Having derived the bivariate distribution we are in a position to discuss inflation forecast uncertainty conditional on the growth of output (or vice versa). The analysis can readily be extended to the case of more than two variables.

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The contribution of this paper is to show how the balance of risk for various macro variables can be linked to inflation uncertainty. Inflation uncertainty is derived from uncertainty in the macro variables that are deemed to be important for future inflation. The paper focuses on the technical derivation of inflation forecast skewness from uncertainty in such macro variables. The uncertainty in these macro variables is based on their historical standard deviations, but we allow these to be subjectively adjusted if there is reason to be more or less uncertain than historically. We also allow for a subjective assessment of the balance of risk, i.e. whether the distributions are symmetric or not. The baseline case is that the distributions of the macro-variables are symmetric and Gaussian with standard deviations based on historical data; any departures from the baseline can typically be justified from some indicator correlated with future inflation.

This paper exmines two potential explanations of the so called January effect in the Swedish stock market for the period January 1919 to December 1989; the tax loss selling hypothesis and the omitted risk factor hypothesis. We document significantly higher returns in both January and July over the sample period. In addition, there is a seasonal pattern in the variances of the monthly returns. There seem to be an interaction between the variance and the mean effects. However, we find no support for either of the proposed hypotheses.

The effects of discrete output price shocks on a firm's optimal rate of investment are examined in a stochastic continuous-time model. Price changes of random size occur at random times. Contrary to previous studies with symmetric adjustment costs, which have found a positive effect of increased uncertainty on investment, I find that with discrete price changes the effect is ambiguous and depends on a fractional moment of the distribution of the relative size of the price change.

The capital market equilibrium is derived in a model where asset returns follow a mixed Poisson jump-diffusion process, rather than a simple diffusion process as in the traditional ICAPM. In the resulting JCAPM (CAPM with Jumps) expected returns are still linear in beta, but in addition premia have to be paid for jump risk. When jump risk is diversifiable in the market portfolio the JCAPM reduces to the standard ICAPM, as in Jarrow and Rosenfeld (1984). Jumps are found to be prevalent in the daily returns of the market indices in the 18 countries investigated, during the time period 1985-89. However, when the year of the crash, 1987, is excluded from the sample, the simple diffusion process gives an adequate description of the market returns in seven countries.