Using the Austrian Business Survey between 2011 and 2016, we study how firms' individual credit market experiences influence
their beliefs about the bank lending policy. Firms that have recently experienced a loan rejection are more likely to believe
that the lending policy is restrictive. We see similar effects for firms that were granted loans, but with conditions worse
than anticipated. Exploiting the panel structure shows that firms without recent credit market experience are less likely
to change their beliefs, which converge towards the middle category. Our findings are in line with theories of rational inattention
and with asymmetric experience effects.
Studie von: Österreichisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung – Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliches Rechenzentrum
We present an uncertainty measure that is based on a business survey in which uncertainty is captured directly by a qualitative
question on subjective uncertainty regarding expectations. Uncertainty perceptions display persistence at the firm level and
changes are associated with past business assessments and expectations. While our uncertainty measure correlates with commonly
used alternatives, it is superior in forecasting and suggests a larger role of uncertainty shocks for aggregate fluctuations.
Its informational content is highest when considering smaller firms or firms with a low growth rate. Our results confirm the
feasibility of constructing uncertainty measures from business survey questions that elicit information on uncertainty of
respondents directly.
This paper examines broad patterns of structural change for a large number of countries on a global scale and for a smaller
set of advanced industrialised countries over time. The findings show that structural change over the past decades followed
the three-sector hypothesis. The past decades were characterised by the rise of the service sector, driven especially by business
services and non-market service. At the same time as manufacturing sectors are declining in terms of shares, they remain the
sectors with the highest contributions to aggregate productivity growth. An analysis of determinants of structural change
confirms that country competencies related to institutional quality, knowledge generation and industrial application of the
new knowledge are an important driving force of structural changes towards services, but that they have a heterogeneous impact
on manufacturing subsectors. High technology manufacturing share seems not to be characterised by a tendency to decline with
the development of country competencies. Broad policy implications are discussed.
This paper examines the association between participation in global value chains and financial globalisation measured by international
net and capital flows. The results show that financial globalisation and the rise of global value chains are related but not
two sides of the same coin. In fact, we find that GVC participation is positively associated with equity capital flows but
negatively associated with debt capital flows. We also study the association of GVC participation and capital flows with aggregate
economic outcomes. The findings show that both GVC participation and equity flows affect the share of mortgage and business
credit. But we uncover also important differences in the impact of capital flows between advanced and emerging countries.
Regarding changes in the economic structure our results suggest a positive association of both GVC participation and equity
inflows on the manufacturing share, while debt inflows are primarily associated with a growth of the service sector in advanced
economies, but not in emerging and developing countries. The finding that there is no strong association between the globalisation
indicators and innovation suggests that the fragmentation of value chains leads to functional specialisation in tasks and
tends to weaken the link between innovation and production at country level. We find in addition that a higher GVC participation
is weakly associated with a higher growth of government revenue, as are debt flows but only in advances countries. This finding
suggests also that debt flows were redirected primarily into safe countries in advanced countries.
Die COVID-19-Krise hat schon tiefe Spuren in den Volkswirtschaften auf der ganzen Welt hinterlassen. Auf Basis von Unternehmensbefragungen
in Deutschland, Österreich und Spanien wird gezeigt, wie ernst die Bedrohung für das Überleben der Firmen war und ist.
This paper explores the structural determinants of high-growth firm shares in Austrian regions. The regional level of analysis
allows one to uncover regularities that are not detectable in firm-level studies. It is found that lower mobility barriers,
firm exits and technological opportunities, measured by digitalization intensities, and, to a lesser extent, agglomeration
effects are associated with a larger share of high-growth firms. The results suggest that comparisons of shares of high-growth
firm across countries and regions should consider differences in the industrial structures together with the often-emphasized
differences in policies and regulations.