Prosperous countries – high CO₂-emissions

The third COVID-19 wave in Germany is ebbing. The number of ICU patients – one of the key parameters of the pandemic – peaked at the end of April, at above 5,100 cases. At the end of May the number was below 2,500. If the trend continues due to vaccinations and warm weather, the number of ICU patients will fall below 1,000 in mid-June. [more]

The COVID-19 crisis has intensified the lack of profitable low-risk investments, which is why numerous investors probably regard the German residential market as an attractive alternative to the bond markets. Rental returns have been trending downwards for ten years now, and the development looks set to continue until the spread between rental returns and low-risk bond yields has narrowed significantly further. [more]

The unemployment rates of teenagers and young adults were already attracting attention during the financial and euro crisis. The corona crisis has again led to massive distortions on the labour markets in many countries. However, the initial development of the official youth unemployment rate was fairly diverse internationally. In some countries the unemployment rate has even fallen sharply. [more]

Governments in many countries are facing growing funding needs as they implement large fiscal stimulus packages to counter the severe economic downturn caused by the corona pandemic. Besides central banks, banks are financing more than half of the rising expenditures, which is affecting the composition of their balance sheets. [more]

In 2019, German carmakers produced significantly more cars in China than at home. China remains by far the most important foreign production site for the German auto industry. While foreign production is likely to rise further, recent development of domestic production gives cause for concern. [more]

The global map shows the inflation targets of developed and emerging markets. In emerging economies central banks tend to have higher inflation targets than the central banks in their developed counterparts. The difference generally arises from their stronger inflation rates partly due to lower productivity in tradeable goods production in emerging markets. This key feature is likely to persist as the catch-up process of many emerging markets will continue for some time. [more]

Between 2000 and 2018, German net energy imports declined by almost 12%. Oil and nuclear energy imports were down considerably as oil heating becomes less popular and the German government has decided to give up nuclear energy. In contrast, net natural gas imports are trending upwards. Coal imports did not start to decline until 2016 and were still considerably higher in 2018 than in 2000 because domestic coal mining was abandoned. Germany’s dependence on energy commodity imports has not declined much over time. In 2018, almost 71% of the necessary energy commodities were imported (2000: 72.6%). [more]

The future of bank branches has been under scrutiny for some time due to the increased usage of online and mobile banking. On top of the general trend, regional differences in demand for branch services may have important implications for the future of branch networks. Structurally fewer client visits in certain regions may exacerbate the pressure to close branches. Within Germany, the number of bank branches has declined sharply from around 40,000 in 2007 to some 28,000 in 2018. [more]

In Germany, a decline in the labour force is inevitable. This can be seen from the recently published official 14th population projection. In this projection, the Federal Statistical Office took into account the past years‘ massive immigration. The impact is impressive. In the next few years, the number of inhabitants will increase by about 1 million to approx. 84 million – a new record high. Under plausible assumptions regarding future immigration (i.e. in the volume close to the past 20-year average – 268.000 p.a.) this number will decrease only slightly in the next two decades. [more]

The German logistics sector has continued to increase its overall turnover, despite the industrial recession. Logistics, one of the biggest sectors in Germany, seems to have decoupled from the industry to some extent. This is quite unusual. However, revenue growth in the logistics sector is supported by several developments: the boom in construction, a larger number of smaller deliveries due to the uptrend in e-commerce, the growing importance of value-added services and price effects. Nevertheless, the industrial recession is likely to have an impact on the logistics sector in the first half of 2019. We expect nominal revenues in the sector to stag-nate or even decline during the first half of 2019. [more]

At the recent meeting of the Governing Council on 7 March 2019, the ECB decided to maintain an extremely expansionary degree of monetary accommodation in future. It now announced to keep target rates at their present extraordinarily low levels at least through year-end 2019 – instead of just "through the summer", as previously pledged. Furthermore, it reiterated that it intends to maintain the huge size of EMU sovereign bond holdings purchased between March 2015 and the end of December 2018 for an incalculable period of time. As a consequence, principal payments from maturing securities bought under the APP (asset purchase programme), including sovereign bonds from the PSPP portfolio (public sector purchase programme) have to be reinvested in full. This ought to support demand for EMU bonds for some time to come, putting downward pressure on yields. [more]

Despite broad-based weakness in recent months, the stock of orders in German manufacturing remained on the uptrend, partly led by the lack of skilled labour and one-off factors in the auto industry (WLTP, diesel). Whilst the high volume of unfilled orders should stabilise industrial production in the current year, the peak ought to be near, as suggested by recent results of the ifo business survey. On balance, manufacturing production in Germany looks set to be virtually flat in 2019. [more]