Monetary Policy and the Economy Q3/15

Downloads

• Monetary Policy and the Economy Q3/15 (PDF, 1,9 MB) September 2015.

Studien und Analysen

• Austria: Sluggish economic growth (PDF, 459 kB) Schneider. Schneider – Monetary Policy and the Economy Q3/15 30.09.2015, 00:00:00

• Causes of declining investment activity in Austria (PDF, 1 MB) Fenz, Ragacs, Schneider, Vondra, Waschiczek. Fenz, Ragacs, Schneider, Vondra, Waschiczek – Monetary Policy and the Economy Q3/15 Austria’s share of investment relative to GDP, which is high by international standards, dipped
  significantly in recent years. This downtrend, which was also evident in peer economies, chiefly
  reflected an adjustment process in a climate of weaker long-term growth. While the international
  trend reversed in mid-2013, Austria’s investment share continued to decline. The
  main reasons for Austrian companies’ current reluctance to invest can be traced back to
  fragile
  demand and deep uncertainty. Lack of access to finance is unlikely to have dampened
  investment activity, as the higher level of internal financing has offset the diminishing importance
  of bank loans. Although there is some evidence of banks tightening their lending
  conditions,
  this is unlikely to have led to credit rationing, as demand for bank loans has also
  fallen off. Estimations based on a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model also show that
  loan supply shocks have only had a small negative impact on growth. Austria, investment, business cycle, loan supply, credit crunch E22, E32, E51 30.09.2015, 00:00:00

• Expected retirement age and pension benefits in Austria: evidence from survey data (PDF, 562 kB) Knell, Segalla, Weber. Knell, Segalla, Weber – Monetary Policy and the Economy Q3/15 In this paper we present evidence on Austrians’ expectations about their retirement age and
  the size of their pension benefits. We find that young people expect to retire at an
  older age compared to the actual age. The answers indicate that this increase in the expected
  retirement age might be sufficient to counterbalance the forecasted rise in life expectancy
  over the next decades. Furthermore,
  the increase is also approximately in line with the
  assumptions
  that underlie official forecasts about the development of pension expenditures.
  People in Austria also expect
  to receive less pension benefits, i.e. they expect net replacement
  rates to decrease, although in this case our results are less conclusive. In general, there exists
  a considerable degree of uncertainty,
  in particular among younger people. Furthermore, we
  find that the main structure of the new pension account system does not seem to be well
  understood.
  This suggests that the rules of the new system could be better communicated (e.g.
  via individualized pension account information). pension system, retirement age, replacement rate, subjective expectations J1, J26, H55, D84 30.09.2015, 00:00:00