IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwwpp/dp825.html

Caught in the US Subprime Meltdown 2007/2008: Germany Loses Its Wallet but Escapes Major Harm

Author

Listed:
  • Stefan Kooths
  • Matthias Rieger

Abstract

The ongoing financial crisis so far cost the German financial sector 38 billion Euros due to losses on its mortgage-related subprime bank exposures. This paper looks for the impact of these losses on the real sector of the economy. First, the financial sector is looked at as part of the overall macro economy in order to identify the direct impact of the write-offs and devaluations of financial assets on value-added and employment in the financial industry. In the second part of the paper the financial sector's role as enabler of real investment is analyzed. So far, there is no significant evidence that the credit creation capacity of the German banking system as a whole was negatively affected (as indicated by stable money multiplier and base equity ratio values). In particular, the flow of credit to non-financial businesses remains intact despite heavy turmoil within the financial sector. Also, the overall interest rate for corporate lending did hardly in-crease. Econometrically, a switching disequilibrium model and a market-clearing approached were setup to test for excess demand during the crisis and any general impact of the crisis on the credit market respectively. The statistical tests turned out to be little helpful for quantifying any major effect. We conclude that despite the substantial financial losses there is no major negative spill-over from the banking sector to the real economy in Germany.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Kooths & Matthias Rieger, 2008. "Caught in the US Subprime Meltdown 2007/2008: Germany Loses Its Wallet but Escapes Major Harm," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 825, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp825
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.89305.de/dp825.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Gertler & Simon Gilchrist, 1994. "Monetary Policy, Business Cycles, and the Behavior of Small Manufacturing Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(2), pages 309-340.
    2. repec:bla:revinw:v:37:y:1991:i:3:p:235-47 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Steven A. Sharpe, 1995. "Bank capitalization, regulation, and the credit crunch: a critical review of the research findings," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 95-20, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Mr. Atish R. Ghosh & Swart R. Ghosh, 1999. "East Asia in the Aftermath: Was there a Crunch?," IMF Working Papers 1999/038, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Bengt Holmstrom & Jean Tirole, 1997. "Financial Intermediation, Loanable Funds, and The Real Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 663-691.
    6. Utz‐Peter Reich, 1991. "Concept And Definition Of Income In The National Accounts," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 37(3), pages 235-247, September.
    7. Ben S. Bernanke & Mark Gertler, 1995. "Inside the Black Box: The Credit Channel of Monetary Policy Transmission," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 27-48, Fall.
    8. Stiglitz, Joseph E & Weiss, Andrew, 1981. "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 393-410, June.
    9. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1777-1804 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Anil K. Kashyap & Jeremy C. Stein, 1994. "Monetary Policy and Bank Lending," NBER Chapters, in: Monetary Policy, pages 221-261, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Richard F. Syron, 1991. "Are we experiencing a credit crunch?," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Jul, pages 3-10.
    12. Ben S. Bernanke & Cara S. Lown, 1991. "The Credit Crunch," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(2), pages 205-248.
    13. Bernanke, Ben S & Blinder, Alan S, 1988. "Credit, Money, and Aggregate Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 435-439, May.
    14. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Garcia, Rene, 1977. "Disequilibrium Econometrics for Business Loans," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(5), pages 1187-1204, July.
    15. Kholodilin Konstantin A. & Menz Jan-Oliver & Siliverstovs Boriss, 2010. "What Drives Housing Prices Down? Evidence from an International Panel," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 230(1), pages 59-76, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Krainer, Robert E., 2014. "Monetary policy and bank lending in the Euro area: Is there a stock market channel or an interest rate channel?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(PB), pages 283-298.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95, May.
    2. Ferri, Giovanni & Tae Soo Kang, 1999. "The credit channel at work - lessons from the Republic of Korea's financial crisis," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2190, The World Bank.
    3. Jiménez, Gabriel & Ongena, Steven & Peydró, José-Luis & Saurina, Jesús, 2010. "Credit supply - Identifying balance-sheet channels with loan applications and granted loans," Working Paper Series 1179, European Central Bank.
    4. Bougheas, Spiros & Mizen, Paul & Yalcin, Cihan, 2006. "Access to external finance: Theory and evidence on the impact of monetary policy and firm-specific characteristics," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 199-227, January.
    5. Jeremy C. Stein & Anil K. Kashyap, 2000. "What Do a Million Observations on Banks Say about the Transmission of Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 407-428, June.
    6. Mingwei Yuan & Christian Zimmermann, 1999. "Credit Crunch, Bank Lending and Monetary Policy: A Model of Financial Intermediation with Heterogeneous Projects," Cahiers de recherche CREFE / CREFE Working Papers 89, CREFE, Université du Québec à Montréal.
    7. Gabriel Jimenez & Steven Ongena & Jose-Luis Peydro & Jesus Saurina, 2012. "Credit Supply and Monetary Policy: Identifying the Bank Balance-Sheet Channel with Loan Applications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2301-2326, August.
    8. Borensztein, Eduardo & Lee, Jong-Wha, 2002. "Financial crisis and credit crunch in Korea: evidence from firm-level data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 853-875, May.
    9. Anil K. Kashyap & Jeremy C. Stein, 1997. "What Do a Million Banks Have to Say About the Transmission of Monetary Policy?," NBER Working Papers 6056, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Adolfo Barajas & Enrique López & Hugo Oliveros, 2001. "¿Por qué en Colombia el Crédito al Sector Privado es tan Reducido," Borradores de Economia 185, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    11. Smant, David / D.J.C., 2002. "Bank credit in the transmission of monetary policy: A critical review of the issues and evidence," MPRA Paper 19816, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Peydró, José-Luis & Polo, Andrea & Sette, Enrico, 2021. "Monetary policy at work: Security and credit application registers evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(3), pages 789-814.
    13. Dietrich Diemo, 2003. "Monetary Policy Shocks and Heterogeneous Finance Decisions: A Model of Hidden Effort Choice and Financial Intermediation," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 4(3), pages 365-388, August.
    14. Repullo, Rafael & Suarez, Javier, 2000. "Entrepreneurial moral hazard and bank monitoring: A model of the credit channel," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(10), pages 1931-1950, December.
    15. Efraim Benmelech & Nittai K. Bergman, 2012. "Credit Traps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 3004-3032, October.
    16. van Holle, Frederiek, 2017. "Essays in empirical finance and monetary policy," Other publications TiSEM 30d11a4b-7bc9-4c81-ad24-5, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. Sangyup Choi, 2018. "Bank Lending Standards, Loan Demand, and the Macroeconomy: Evidence from the Emerging Market Bank Loan Officer Survey," Working papers 2018rwp-126, Yonsei University, Yonsei Economics Research Institute.
    18. Paul E. Orzechowski, 2019. "The bank capital channel and bank profits," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 372-388, July.
    19. Burcu Erdogan, 2010. "Kreditklemme in Deutschland: Mythos oder Realität?," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 79(4), pages 27-37.
    20. Torsten Schmidt & Hiltrud Nehls, 2003. "Credit Crunch in Germany?," RWI Discussion Papers 0006, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp825. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.