Band 65, Heft 3

Insurance has been suggested as a policy instrument that can help in managing the rising economic cost of natural catastrophes. Evidence, however, shows that many homeowners do not insure their homes against natural catastrophes and tend to depend on (unreliable) disaster aid. This paper surveys the economics, insurance and psychology literature to explain why few homeowners insure against natural catastrophes. The paper covers the relevant theoretical approaches as well as the available empirical evidence and possible policy measures.

This paper uses an approach recently suggested by Gabaix (Eonometrica 2011) to investigate for the first time the role of idiosyncratic shocks to the largest firms in the dynamics of imports by firms from manufacturing industries. For Germany we find evidence that imports are power-law distributed and that the distribution of imports in the industries can be characterised as fat-tailed. Results show that idiosyncratic shocks to very large firms are important for the import dynamics in 2010/2011 but not in 2009/2010.

This paper integrates a money and credit market into a static approximation of the baseline New Keynesian model based on a money-and-credit-in-the-utility approach, in which real balances and borrowing contribute to the household’s utility. In this framework, the central bank has no direct control over the interest rate on bonds. Instead, the central bank’s instrument variables are the monetary base and the refinancing rate, i. e. the rate at which the central bank provides loans to the banking sector. Our approach gives rise to a credit channel, in which current and expected future interest rates on the bond and loan market directly affect current goods demand. The credit channel amplifies the output effects of isolated monetary disturbances. Taking changes in private (inflation and interest rate) expectations into account, we find that - contrarily to BERNANKE and BLINDER (1988) - the credit channel may also dampen the output effects of monetary disturbances. The expansionary effects of a monetary expansion may be substantially diminished if the monetary disturbance is accompanied by a contractionary credit shock. In a dynamic version of our model, in which expectations are formed endogenously, we find that the credit channel amplifies output responses.

We review the literature on the economics of climate change with a focus on the evolution of the literature from some of the early classic papers to the latest contributions. We divide the paper into three main sections: trends in greenhouse gas emissions, mitigation, and adaptation.