What Determines the ZEW Indicator?

This paper analyzes which factors are driving the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment. Using the results of a poll among survey participants as well as Granger causality tests we identify three groups of influence factors: other sentiment indicators, financial variables and real economy data. In a second step these factors are used to estimate out-of-sample forecasts for the ZEW Indicator. We find that a simple model that includes German manufacturing order data, the German yield structure and the US Consumer Confidence indicator as explanatory variables is able to outperform a naive univariate benchmark model as well as the consensus forecast for the ZEW Indicator as published by news agencies. --leading indicators,Germany,zew,forecasting

Die finanzielle und soziale Armut der Angestellten : Figurationen der Erwerbsarmut zwischen Proletariat und Bürgertum bei Hermann Ungar, Martin Kessel und Hans Fallada

Darstellungen der Erwerbsarmut sind in der deutschen Literatur spätestens seit dem 19. Jahrhundert weit verbreitet, prominente Beispiele stellen etwa Georg Büchners "Woyzeck" als schockierende gesellschaftliche Analyse des Teufelskreises aus Armut, Erniedrigung und Unterdrückung des Paupers sowie Gerhart Hauptmanns "Die Weber" als desillusionierende Darstellung der Ausbeutung des Proletariats dar. In den 20er und 30er Jahren gerät eine neue soziale Schicht in den Fokus der Aufmerksamkeit, die in zahlreichen sozialen Studien und literarisch, nun vorrangig nicht mehr in der Form des sozialen Dramas, sondern im Genre des neusachlichen Romans, aufgegriffen und beleuchtet wird: die Angestellten

What Determines the ZEW Indicator?

This paper analyzes which factors are driving the ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment. Using the results of a poll among survey participants as well as Granger causality tests we identify three groups of influence factors: other sentiment indicators, financial variables and real economy data. In a second step these factors are used to estimate out-of-sample forecasts for the ZEW Indicator. We find that a simple model that includes German manufacturing order data, the German yield structure and the US Consumer Confidence indicator as explanatory variables is able to outperform a naive univariate benchmark model as well as the consensus forecast for the ZEW Indicator as published by news agencies

The Sum of Its Parts: The Lawyer-Client Relationship in Initial Public Offerings

This Article examines the impact of the quality of a lawyer\u27s working relationship with his or her client on one of the most important types of capital markets deal in a company\u27s existence: its initial public offering (IPO). Drawing on data from interviews with equity capital markets lawyers at major law firms, and analyzing data from IPOs in the United States registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission between June 1996 and December 2010, this study finds a strong association between several measures of IPO performance and the familiarity between the lead underwriter and its counsel, as measured by the number of times a particular law firm serves as counsel to a managing underwriter within a relatively short time period. Performance is gauged according to a stock\u27s opening day returns, price performance over thirty, sixty, and ninety trading days, correct price revision, litigation rates, and the speed at which deals are completed. I also analyze the relationships between the lawyers for the lead underwriter and the lawyers for the issuer. The analysis shows some benefits from familiarity, albeit generally smaller than those associated with the underwriter-lawyer relationship. In all cases, the positive effects of repeated interaction diminish the further back in time the previous collaborations occurred. To rule out selection and reverse causality, I perform a number of tests using smaller subsets of the data to remove observations that are plausibly selection driven. I also show that the relationships between familiarity and deal quality occur independently of the level of the lawyers\u27 experience. These findings support the conclusion that lawyers\u27 relational skill can positively influence deal outcomes, independent even of substance and process knowledge. I hypothesize that the core advantage of repeated interaction is the formation of more effective lawyer-client team dynamics

Auswirkungen der Besteuerung von Kapitaleinkünften und Veräußerungsgewinnen auf Vermögensbildung und Finanzmärkte : Status quo und Reformoptionen

Die vorliegende Untersuchung analysiert die Auswirkungen einer erweiterten Besteuerung privater Veräußerungsgewinne im Geldvermögen. In diesem Zusammenhang werden auch weitere in jüngster Zeit diskutierte Reformoptionen analysiert

Generation and transcriptional programming of intestinal dendritic cells: essential role of retinoic acid

The vitamin A metabolite retinoic acid (RA) regulates adaptive immunity in the intestines, with well-characterized effects on IgA responses, Treg induction and gut trafficking of T and B effector cells. It also controls the generation of cDC precursors in the bone marrow and regulates cDC subset representation, but its roles in the specialization of intestinal cDC subsets is understudied. Here we show that RA acts cell-intrinsically in developing gut-tropic pre-mucosal DC (pre-μDC) to effect the differentiation and drive the specialization of intestinal CD103+CD11b− (cDC1) and of CD103+CD11b+ (cDC2). Systemic deficiency or DC-restricted antagonism of RA signaling resulted in altered phenotypes of intestinal cDC1 and cDC2, and reduced numbers of cDC2. Effects of dietary deficiency were most apparent in the proximal small intestine, and were rapidly reversed by reintroducing vitamin A. In cultures of pre-μDC with Flt3L and GM-CSF, RA induced cDC with characteristic phenotypes of intestinal cDC1 and cDC2 by controlling subset-defining cell surface receptors, regulating subset-specific transcriptional programs, and suppressing proinflammatory NF-κB-dependent gene expression. Thus RA is required for transcriptional programming and maturation of intestinal cDC, and with GM-CSF and Flt3L provides a minimal environment for in vitro generation of intestinal cDC1- and cDC2-like cDC from specialized precursors

Two-photon double ionization of neon using an intense attosecond pulse train

We present the first demonstration of two-photon double ionization of neon using an intense extreme ultraviolet (XUV) attosecond pulse train (APT) in a photon energy regime where both direct and sequential mechanisms are allowed. For an APT generated through high-order harmonic generation (HHG) in argon we achieve a total pulse energy close to 1 $\mu$J, a central energy of 35 eV and a total bandwidth of $\sim30$ eV. The APT is focused by broadband optics in a neon gas target to an intensity of $3\cdot10^{12}$W$\cdot$cm$^{-2}$. By tuning the photon energy across the threshold for the sequential process the double ionization signal can be turned on and off, indicating that the two-photon double ionization predominantly occurs through a sequential process. The demonstrated performance opens up possibilities for future XUV-XUV pump-probe experiments with attosecond temporal resolution in a photon energy range where it is possible to unravel the dynamics behind direct vs. sequential double ionization and the associated electron correlation effects