<link>https://mathiashoffmann.net/</link></image><item><title>New survey: Global Tides on Local Shores</h1> <article> <h1>New survey: Global Tides on Local Shores</h1> <p>Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>My interpretative survey <strong>“Global Tides on Local Shores: How Do International Capital Flows Affect House Prices?”</strong> is now published in the <em>Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance</em>. It reviews what we have learned about how international capital flows shape house prices across countries.</p> <p> · </p> </article> <article> <h1>Global Tides on Local Shores: How Do International Capital Flows Affect House Prices?</h1> <p>Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>The European Angle: how can we preserve Europe’s social model?</h1> <p>Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>A couple of weeks ago I participated in a great initiative launched by two high-school students at . They run a You-Tube podcast channel on European economics and politics called the “[European Angle](http://European Angle)” that I think deserves to get a lot of attention. I had the pleasure to be invited by Rafael and his friend Myles for a discussion of how Europe can balance its traditional social model with the demands that the new geopolitical order puts on our societies. The discussion is available .</p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in Financial History Review</h1> <p>Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Our paper “<strong> </strong>” with Okubo Toshihiro (Keio University) and Okazaki Tetsuji (Meiji Gakuin University)is now published as open access article in the <em><strong> </strong></em>.</p> <p>In the paper we examine how the expansion of branch banking in peripheral Japanese prefectures in the interwar period helped integrate financial markets during this formative period in which the structure of modern Japan’s banking market was shaped. Through their branch networks, large, urban banks from the major centers (mainly Tokyo, Osaka) did not primarily compete with incumbent local banks in their respective local lending markets. Rather, urban banks exported deposits from low-growth peripheral areas to high-growth prefectures in the center. This bid up deposit rates for incumbent local banks, forcing these to tighten their lending standards to traditional industries. Our results highlight how competition for funds enables an ultimately efficient reallocation of capital while preserving a functionally separated banking system in which local banks engage in relationship based lending to small firms while larger banks lend to larger firms countrywide.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Branch Banking and Regional Financial Markets: Evidence from Prewar Japan</h1> <p>Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Dollar Funding and Housing Markets: The Role of non-US Global Banks</h1> <p>Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Almost 9 months into Trump II: Tariffs, Trade wars, and the future of (Switzerland in) Europe</h1> <p>Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>With the (not so) new man in the White House, it has been a busy first three quarters of 2025 for the global economics punditry. Such are the times that even the writer of this blog was occasionally asked to leave the ivory tower to comment on current affairs. While I found it difficult to update this space in real time over the last couple of months, here is a round-up of my recent media contributions:</p> <p>An article by Jürg Meier in the <strong>NZZ</strong> in which I commented about the macroeconomic uncertainty created by Liberation day: — <strong>NZZ</strong>‘s Albert Steck about Apple and the global reconfiguration of supply chains ( ) — And Simon Schmidt quoting me on some of key questions of US trade policy in two articles for <strong>Tagesanzeiger</strong> ( and ).</p> <p>Just around Trump’s “liberation day”, my own employer’s <strong>UZH News</strong> published a series on “ “, drawing on insights from UZH-researchers across disciplines. One of the pieces was a joint interview with my colleague and economic historian Tobias Straumann on why Europe should have more confidence in itself. See and, in German, .</p> <p>The <strong>Sunday Times</strong> also had in early August to which I contributed (paywall).</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Granular Origins of the Global Financial Cycle</h1> <p>Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in the JPE Macro</h1> <p>Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>My paper <strong> </strong> with Lilia Ruslanova Habibulina is about to appear in the September 2024 issue of the <strong>Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics</strong>. (follow the link above for open access. ).</p> <p><strong>The upshot:</strong> U.S. state-level banking deregulation during the 1980s considerably dampened the fallout on local economies of the China trade shock a decade later. The reason: households in financially integrated areas could more easily borrow against their housing wealth to smooth consumption. This kept house prices and wages in the non-tradable sector up, facilitating labor reallocation away from manufacturing.</p> </article> <article> <h1>The SNB and its Watchers</h1> <p>Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Together with Harris Dellas, I am organizing this year’s <strong>SNB and its watchers</strong> conference at the University of Zurich on November 22nd. </p> </article> <article> <h1>Growing Green: How State-Level Banking Deregulation Helped Reduce Industrial Emissions</h1> <p>Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Softening the Blow: U.S. State-Level Banking Deregulation and Sectoral Reallocation after the China Trade Shock</h1> <p>Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Capital flows and housing markets: a global perspective</h1> <p>Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>The slides of a keynote “Capital Flows and housing markets: a global perspective” that I gave in December 2022 at the China Economist International Frontier Conference at Peking University are available .</p> </article> <article> <h1>Keynote at 2023 GPEG meeting.</h1> <p>Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>At the 2023 meeting of the Global Economic Policy Group (GPEG), I gave a keynote lecture on <em>US Banking deregulation and sectoral reallocation after the China trade shock.</em> This year the meeting was hosted by ‘s group from FU Hagen (Germany’s remote learning unversity) at the FU campus in Nürnberg. This was a fun event and some pictures and programs of this year’s and previous editions can be found . My keynote slides are available . ( A revised version of the underlying paper is coming soon…)</p> </article> <article> <h1>Panel discussion on global inflation and challenges for monetary policy</h1> <p>Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>On Mar 7 2023 I had the honour to moderate a panel with SNB President Thomas Jordan, (then) Swiss Re Chairman Sergio Ermotti and Franziska Tschudi Sauber, CEO of Weidmann group about the challenges to monetary policy in a challenging global environment. A retrospective of the event (in German) can be found under </p> </article> <article> <h1>Growing Like Germany: Local Public Debt, Local Banks, Low Private Investment</h1> <p>Wed, 01 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Of banks and crises: the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics</h1> <p>Sun, 13 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p> about this year’s Nobel prize that I wrote with my colleagues Christian Ewerhart and Joachim Voth just appeared in the Swiss economic policy journal “Die Volkswirtschaft”. Learn more about why financial crises are hard to predict, why banks <em>must</em> be unstable, why the laureates’ work is super relevant in a world of digital currencies — and what the late Queen Elizabeth II has to do with it all: </p> </article> <article> <h1>“The hikes of others”: some thoughts on the global tightening cycle after the Fed and SNB decisions</h1> <p>Thu, 22 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>While the Fed’s 75bps hike on Wednesday 21st was in line with expectations, the market had priced in a 100 bps hike for the SNB. In this sense the 75bps announcement came as a dovish surprise, even though this still is the biggest SNB rate increase in more than 20 years.</p> <p>While the SNB explicitly did not rule out further hikes in December and, if necessary, forex market intervention in the interim, it is noteworthy to what extent governor Thomas Jordan emphasized the role of international spillovers through the hiking of other central banks and the role of transitory inflation pressures in his opening statement and the subsequent media Q&A.</p> <p>In this context, it may therefore be interesting to widen the perspective to the international level to take stock where we stand in what one might call the “global tightening cycle” and how we got here. As “global tightening cycle” I define the current thrive of virtually all major central banks in advanced economies (except maybe Japan) to tighten monetary policy in often quite dramatic (50-75bps) increments in order to fight global inflation pressure.</p> <h3 id="the-global-tightening-cycle-a-shift-from-camp-transitory-to-camp-permanent">The “global tightening cycle”: a shift from “Camp Transitory” to “Camp Permanent”</h3> <p>Roughly a year ago, most AE central bankers were firmly in what I want to call “camp transitory”. The tenet of “camp transitory” was that quickly rising inflation would come down again largely on its own because it reflected a combination of several, well, transitory factors: a) basis effects as prices had declined during the Covid crisis and were now increasing again b) transient supply bottlenecks amidst a recovery that affected different sectors at different speeds leading to, c), large relative sectoral price changes and, d), an increase in energy prices due to increased demand as the global economy recovered.</p> <p>Also, because the factors above, and in particular b) and d), are global phenomena, there was a perception that there was little domestic monetary policy could do — always provided that inflation expectations would stay anchored.</p> <p>Over the last year, most AE central bankers seem to have switched to “camp permanent” though, and so, it appears, for good reason:<br> Global intermediate input supply bottle necks proved more persistent than many expected (largely due to China’s continued zero-COVID policy) while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions drove up energy and food prices. In the US, an additional factor was the passing of another round of gigantic fiscal stimulus in the form of the (in)aptly named “inflation reduction act”. Most importantly, all of these shocks started to be reflected in a persistent upward drift of inflation expectations.</p> <h3 id="a-textbook-view-on-permanent-and-transitory-supply-shocks">A textbook view on permanent and transitory supply shocks</h3> <p>Except for the US fiscal stimulus, all of the above shocks can be considered as “supply-side” and it may therefore be instructive to look at what our undergraduate text-book macroeconomics — in the form of the venerable AS-AD model— has to say about transitory and permanent supply shocks. <strong>NOTE: if you can’t be bothered to read this (you may be forgiven), then just go to “TLDR” below for the main take aways.</strong></p> <p>The graph below illustrates permanent and transitory supply shocks in the AS-AD model. The upper panel reflects a permanent supply shock, the lower panel a transitory supply shock. In both panels, the economy is initially at equilibrium at point <strong>A</strong> where the short-run aggregate supply curve (SAS), the lon-run aggregate supply curve LAS and the aggregate demand curve AD all intersect. At point <strong>A</strong> inflation is at its long-run expected level πe, output on its long-run trend Yn and unemployment at its natural rate.</p> <p> <figure > <div class="flex justify-center "> <div class="w-full" > </div> </div></figure> </p> <p><strong>Effects of permanent (upper panel) and transitory (lower panel) supply shocks in the AS-AD model</strong></p> <p>Consider the permanent supply shock in the upper panel first. A permanent supply shock reduces the productive capacity of the economy and therefore shifts the LAS curve left, to LAS’. Think of the SAS-curve as being nailed to the LAS-curve at the point where π=πe so that it shifts together with LAS as Y1n drops to Y2n to the new short-run supply curve SAS’.</p> <p>As a result, there is a new short-run equilibrium with higher inflation and lower output at point B. But of course that’s not the end of it. As firms and households observe inflation is higher than they expected, they will revise their expectations upwards. Recall that the new SAS’ curve intersects the LAS’ curve where π=πe. This means that the SAS’ curve shifts further upwards if inflation expectations increase, leading to even higher inflation and even lower output. Where does it all end? Well, in point C, where we have permanently higher inflation and permanently lower output.</p> <p>So what should the central bank do? The answer is: it should act decisively to avoid that people adjust their expectations upward . Ideally, it would nip any increase in inflation expectations in the bud (i.e. avoid any “second round effects”) by shifting the AD curve downward to AD’, so that it intersects the other two curves at point D.</p> <p>So far, so textbook. But it is worth noting what this means: in this setting there is no cost in terms of <em>additional</em> lost output to decisive monetary tightening. The reason is that in the medium-term, irrespective of whether the central bank acts or not, the economy will have the new, lower trend output Y2n anyway. There is just the choice between a permanently high-inflation equilibrium (<strong>C</strong>) or a low-inflation equilibrium (<strong>D</strong>). In that sense, in this permanent supply shock scenario the central bank can always engineer a “soft landing”, i.e. reduce inflation without a recession (defined as output being below its long-term / trend level). The crux of the matter however is: it does not feel like a soft landing at all. The transition from <strong>A</strong> to <strong>C</strong> or <strong>D</strong> comes with a decisive reduction in incomes and living standards and an increase in the natural rate of unemployment. It will not feel like we are in a boom (relative to our new normal at Y2n) but in a deep recession that lasts forever….</p> <p>Now consider a transitory negative supply shock (lower panel). Transitory in this model means that the LAS curve does not move because trend output is not changed. But the short-run aggretate supply curve SAS moves left. Recall why this happens: the SAS is essentially the famous Phillips-curve in disguise and it says that firms are willing to temporarily supply more output (and hire more labor, lowering unemployment) if prices (and thus inflation) exceed their expected level. This happens because wages and many other input costs are usually sluggish and their prices are set based on previous expectations. Hence, it is profitable to hire more labor and produce more output while wages are still fixed at old levels (predicated on previous expectations of costs of living). This explains the upward slope of the SAS.</p> <p>Now, with a temporary negative supply shock (e.g. rising gas prices), firms will want to supply less output for any given inflation surprise, leading to the leftward shift to the new short run supply curve SAS’. The result is higher inflation and a recession in point <strong>E</strong>.<br> But what should the central bank do here? Recall that by tightening policy it would shift the AD curve downwards (say to AD’) which would lower inflation but also deepen the recession. In fact, if the shock to SAS is temporary, the best option is to do nothing. If the gas price drops again (or if firms find good subsitutes for gas), then the SAS’ curve will shift right again. Note that this will generally be gradual even if the underlying transitory shock is already gone. Why? Well, the reason is again inflation expectations and the fact that (in the absence of temporary supply shocks) LAS and SAS will intersect at π=πe. Hence, if people observe inflation being higher than they expected, they will revise these expectations upwards, so that (even with the original supply shock gone), the SAS curve will not immediately shift back again but will only gradually shift back (see e.g. SAS”).</p> <p>Interestingly, that implies that inflation expectations will stay elevated (relative to where we started at point A) for a while. But with the short-run supply curve at SAS” , actual inflation will start to undershoot people’s expectations, leading them to gradually revise them downwards and taking us back to point A.</p> <p><strong>TLDR:</strong> So, which scenario are we in? Permanent or transitory? Of course that is exactly the question that central bankers have to answer. As the shocks happen, we just don’t know. In both scenarios inflation expectations will initially increase so telling the two apart in real time will not work! But the policy recommendations could not be more different: if the shock is permanent, aggressive tightening is the clear-cut recommendation. If the shock is transitory, not doing anything is the best a central bank can do. This explains why AE central banks were initially hesitant to act on early signs of increasing inflation and it may also help understand their highly synchronized move to sharp tightening as soon as evidence of de-anchoring of inflation expectations became more salient — the “global tightening cycle”.</p> <h3 id="shocks-may-be-less-persistent-than-we-thought">Shocks may be less persistent than we thought</h3> <p>Fortunately, recent data give us some clues: Oil prices have already fallen to well below 100 dollar a barrel from their peaks in the first two quarters of 2022. Forward gas prices are down by half for the spring on current spot prices which (even allowing for seasonal peaks in price during winter) is considerable. Inflation expectations in the U.S. have peaked already. Food exports from Ukraine are slowly resuming…</p> <p>All this suggests that there is a considerable temporary component to all these negative supply shocks.</p> <p>But there is a more fundamental issue that concerns the very structure of our economies: How persistent a supply shock eventually turns out to be is ultimately also determined by how quickly the economy can substitute away from expensive inputs.</p> <p>And here the evidence is quite encouraging as well. Germany for example is highly dependent on gas imports and industry lobbyists and politicians were and still are predicting the worst. However, a group of German economists around Ben Moll at LSE and Christian Bayer at Uni Bonn have shown quite persuasively that the ability of the economy as a whole to subsitute this apparently indispensable input has been systematically underestimated. Recent empirical evidence suggests that Germany was able to reduce gas consumption by 20 percent over a year without a reduction output and, so far, without an increase in unemployment. This does not mean that there will be no recession, but it means that it (the recession, and with it, inflation) may be more transitory (and possibly less deep) than many have thought.</p> <p>All this suggests that negative supply factors driving inflation at the global level are already mitigating, providing a good reason for the SNB to tread relatively carefully on its rate rises while still sending a determined signal of being prepared to act if inflationary pressures really turn out to be more persistent than expected.</p> <h3 id="importance-of-international-spillovers">Importance of international spillovers</h3> <p>In trade-weighted terms, the franc has appreciated by arond 7% since mid-year which gives a considerable buffer that shields Swiss consumer prices from inflation elsewhere. That’s partly due to the previous Swiss hikes but also due to the appreciation that the Swiss franc as a safe haven currency typically sees during times of crisis. This is a first way in which global factors may also dampen inflation here in Switzerland</p> <p>Add to this another good reason for the SNB to stay its hand: the “hikes of others” (most notably the Fed) are already doing a lot of the work. Global tightening is already mitigating demand for Swiss exports in the rest of the world while the real bilateral exchange rate vis-à-vis the euro area (from which we get most. of our imports of consumption goods) has appreciated considerably. Hence, keeping interest rate differentials vis-à-vis the dollar and euro constant by setting them to the levels at which they were before the recent ECB and Fed rate hikes (by also doing a 75bps) made sense.</p> <p>Maurice Obstfeld has that the current hiking cycle has neglected the powerful international spillover effects from rate increases and that central bankers just looking at domestic conditions might well do too much of a good thing.<br> The SNB seems to have been heeding Obstfeld’s point in its decision this morning. With Swiss inflation standing at less than half of what it is in the US and the euro area, it could afford to wait all while keeping all options on the table.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Germany’s first trade deficit since the 1990s…</h1> <p>Thu, 08 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Before the summer break I gave an interview to the New York-based about what the first German trade deficit in almost three decades means and whether it is reason for deeper worry.</p> <p>The gist of my argument is that the German public has long fetishised its current account surpluses as a sign of strength. It was not. with Iryna Stewen and Michael Stiefel highlights that high surpluses actually reflected some of Germany’s structural weaknesses and were far from being an unmitigated sign of strength. That also means that a one-off deficit is nothing to worry about. But could the move into deficit reflect deeper challenges to Germany’s growth model? This is indeed likely to be the case. Read the full article here: </p> </article> <article> <h1>Series of video interviews on energy crisis, inflation, (de-) globalization, China and government debt</h1> <p>Thu, 08 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Matthias Schober from the German personal finance education portal pfenningfabrik.de invited me for a series of half-hour videos in which we discuss the current global economic situation, ranging from the energy crisis, ECB monetary policy to China and government finances.</p> <p>The first of the series, covering the energy crsis and inflation available here: </p> <p>Update Sep 14th 2022: The second part , covering global power shifts and the economic outlook for China, US, Europe is now available here: </p> <p>We are currently planning another interview on government debt for in a couple of weeks. Watch this space.</p> <p>Update, Oct 26th 2022: The interview on government debt is available here: </p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in Journal of International Economics</h1> <p>Thu, 21 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Our paper “ ” with Egor Maslov and Bent Sorensen has been accepted at the Journal of International Economics.</p> <p><strong>Upshot:</strong> After the inception of the euro, the real economy in most member countries remained dependent on credit by domestic banks, which increasingly funded themselves through cross-border interbank funding. We find that this pattern of ‘double-decker’ banking integration exposed domestic banks to sharp declines in cross-border interbank lending during the eurozone crisis. As a result, domestic banks reduced lending which led to large declines in output in sectors with many small (bank-dependent) firms. We propose a quantitative small open economy model to account for these patterns and conclude that a global banking shock leading to a sudden stop in cross-border interbank lending in the eurozone is required to account for them.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Will sanctions on Russia work?</h1> <p>Fri, 25 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>In a recent , I had a chance to discuss with my host Claudia Steinmann the implications of sanctions for the Russian and western economies. We also talked about whether or not China is going to benefit from the situation. In this post, I follow up on my interview and elaborate a little more on whether sanctions will work or not. In the next post, I plan to write a little more on how I see the role of China.</p> <p>Will sanctions work, then? I think, it is important to answer that question at three levels: macroeconomic, political, military-strategic. And at the three levels the respective answer is “yes”, “it depends” and “probably not”. But then there is another level — bear with me….</p> <ul> <li> <p>Take the macroeconomic level first. Sanctions are already having a devastating effect on the Russian economy. The bulk of foreign currency reserves has been seized, the ruble has tumbled, domestic inflation is soaring, trade has collapsed, production come to a standstill in many parts of the economy. This is hurting the regime, but it is hurting the average Russian even more. While “oligarchs” have been targeted by the seizure of their overseas assets, the overall effect of the sanctions is clearly much smaller for oligarchs than for the average Russian household. Oligarchs are people with international networks and globally diversified asset portfolios, including access to countries that do not implement any sanctions ( ). Such asset shifting is not really an option for the average Russian, though. Hence, if anything the West should work harder on actually implementing and extending the sanctions on the oligarchs. Actually seizing their assets would be a start, implementation in many countries (including Switzerland, Germany…) is patchy at best so far.</p> </li> <li> <p>Consider next the political impact of sanctions, in particular on how sanctions change the likelihood of regime change. Here the outlook is more mixed. One political rationale behind the sanctions is to foment unrest in the wider population, erode support amonh privileged civil servants and the military and/or trigger a coup of by the inner circle of power. While one can always hope, I wouldn’t count on that coup. And the fallout of the sanctions on the wider population also gives Putin’s propaganda a way to blame their suffering on the alleged unfair treatment of Russia by the West. We have seen similarly crippling sanctions in Iran, for example. The regime there is still in power…</p> </li> <li> <p>The third level at which sanctions were meant to work is military-strategic. The idea is to to deprive the regime of assets and future hard-currency revenue, so it can no longer finance its war. Clearly, the sanctions make it harder for Putin to buy Western technology. They make it harder to sustain the economy and muster political support. All true. But Russia does <em>not</em> need hard currency to import raw materials and commodities to fight a war as other countries would have to. Russia is a natural-resource super power. Russia has a formidable military-industrial complex. Keeping that war machine running does not require foreign currency. Instead, as time goes by, the machine will be financed in the way long wars are always financed: by monetization, using the printing press. De facto state-controlled arms producers will just accept freshly printed paper.<br> So, yes German, Italian, Swiss payments for Gas have helped Russia <em>acquire</em> assets, infrastructure and technology for its war in the past. If Europe continues to buy gas, and oil it certainly helps ease the economic cost for Putin to sustain his war. Would stop buying that energy from Russia accelerate the decline of the Russian economy? Sure. Does Putin care? No, I don’t think so. Because it won’t be able to stop the war machine as such. And that’s all that counts for him.</p> </li> </ul> <p>So, are sanctions all in vain then? Short of direct military intervention–which NATO has rightly ruled out–they were the harshest option and I think they were still the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean they will succeed in the ways they were argued to operate, though.</p> <p>But there may be much better reason for sanctions after all: some that seized Russian assets could ultimately be used to finance reparations or a Marshall plan for Ukraine after the war. In my opinion, they could already be used while the war lasts—to provide finance for a much more determined support of Ukraine, including a more determined supply of arms, thus making it considerably cheaper and more sustainable for the West to uphold this support.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Russia’s war in Ukraine, SWIFT sanctions and the Renminbi as an international currency</h1> <p>Tue, 01 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>In a couple of interviews on Swiss Italian language radio RSI this weekend ( (from minute 18), (from minute 8) and ), I argued that the SWIFT sanctions were the right thing to do and we already see their short-term impact in the form of a de-facto collapse of the Russian banking system: people are hoarding cash (credit cards have stopped working, they are ultimately based on the US infrastructure and the SWIFT payment systems) bringing the banking sector to crumble. And the firepower of the Russian central bank in terms of currency stabilization has been severely curtailed because its foreign-currency reserves (which of course are not sitting as dollar cash piles in its vaults but on foreign bank accounts) have effectively been seized. The effect has been a collapse of the rouble and will be high domestic inflation, coupled with the collapse of many small private firms which will no longer have access to bank credit.</p> <p>Even though there is a risk that some of this will also spill over to western banks who are heavily exposed to Russia, I would argue that this can be dealt with. In fact, some political willingness to also accept some economic disruption in the west will be needed to make the sanctions develop their full impact.</p> <p>Against this background, the current extent of the sanctions can still be seen as too small, since some Russian banks still have access to SWIFT. This allegedly was the condition of e.g. the German Italian government for their agreement to the SWIFT sanctions because they want to make sure they can still pay for Russian energy supplies on which they depend more than most western countries. It is true that, for maximum short-term impact, this loophole should be closed quickly because in the current setup German and Italian energy payments effectively help the regime in Moscow finance its war in Ukraine.</p> <p>But while SWIFT sanctions are a sharp sword in the short run, there is a risk that its continued use will make the sword if not blunt but then considerably less sharp over time. Unavoidably, there will be some kind of medium-term adjustment. Russia has developed its own payment system since its first invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and will be trying to expand it. I don’t expect this to come to much though.</p> <p>Much more importantly, the Chinese stand ready to provide access to their own system, CIPS (China / Cross-border international payment system) which they have developed since 2012. It is part of China’s decade-long effort to establish the Renminbi as an international reserve currency and as a currency of invoice in international trade. Having international energy trade denominated in renminbi (imagine a barrel of oil being quoted not only in dolla but also or even only in Renminibi) is a long-standing dream of the Chinese government. In the current situation, Russia will undoubtedly turn more of its energy exports to China and also increasingly use China as gateway to channel its oil and gas to global markets. While this does not mean that the renminbi will come to rival the dollar as the world dominant currency anytime soon, it is a unique opportunity for China to take a decisive step in that direction.Tellingly, China has already announced that it is not going along with sanctions on Russia….</p> <p>And maybe that’s why even the U.S. is, at least for now, willing to accept German and Italian recalcitrance on closing the door on Russian energy exports to the west completely….</p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in the Journal of International Economics</h1> <p>Sat, 05 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>The paper (with ), has been accepted by the <strong>Journal of International Economics</strong>.</p> <p>We show how the geographical reallocation of credit dampened regional heterogeneity in business cycles during Japan’s lost decade. Even though large, country-wide (“integrated”) banks were most affected by the property crisis in the major cities, they reduced their lending less in areas where they had many bank-dependent SME customers all while reducing credit to big corporates who increasingly turned to bond issuance.</p> <p>We instrument for regional banking integration by exploiting that the regional segmentation of Japan’s banking markets goes back to the local cooperative financial institutions that financed the silk industry in the late 19th century. Banking in the former silk regions was effectively less integrated with the rest of the country at the end of the 20th century. Our results show that well-integrated banking markets help stabilize a monetary union, also and in particular during a financial crisis.</p> </article> <article> <h1>`By a Silken Thread': Regional Banking Integration and Credit Reallocation during Japan's Lost Decade</h1> <p>Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Small Firms and Domestic Bank Dependence in Europe's Great Recession</h1> <p>Sat, 01 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>How high local public debt and local public banks crowd out private investment in Germany – and what the debt brake has to do with it</h1> <p>Wed, 09 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>In a together with (UZH) and (JGU Mainz)) we discuss our new CEPR discussion paper . The paper shows that local government debt in Germany crowds out private investment to the tune of 1 percent of GDP per year. The reason: Forced to lend to local governments by their statutory mandate, local public banks try to “make up” for the low-yields on municipal debt by charging SME higher rates in what are locally segmented credit markets. This effect is exacerbated by the dire straits of municipal finances in Germany which, as we argue, is a direct consequence of the debt brake at the federal and state levels which shifted a lot of expensive government task to municipalities.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Why do house prices comove across coutries?</h1> <p>Thu, 29 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>My paper “ ” with Torsten Ehlers (BIS) and Alexander Raabe (UZH / ESM) is now out as BIS discusssion paper no 897. Here is the BIS tweet:</p> <blockquote class="border-l-4 border-neutral-300 dark:border-neutral-600 pl-4 italic text-neutral-600 dark:text-neutral-400 my-6"> <p>Why do move together across countries? US capital inflows ease conditions for non-US global banks, which increases their lending globally. This drives mortgage supply and synchronises house prices internationally </p> <p>— Bank for International Settlements (@BIS_org) </p> </blockquote> <p> <figure > <div class="flex justify-center "> <div class="w-full" > </div> </div></figure> </p> </article> <article> <h1>European Forum at Beijing University, Oct 17th 2020</h1> <p>Tue, 27 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>I had the honor to represent the University of Zurich at the 2020s European Forum of the School of Economics at Beijing University. My slides on can be downloaded here and are based on my recent with Lilia Ruslanova</p> </article> <article> <h1>Radio debate on RSI taking stock of the economics of Mr. Trump</h1> <p>Wed, 30 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>I had the privilege to be invited to a Radio debate on Radio della Svizzera Italiana with former IMF director Carlo Cottarelli to discuss the economic consequences of Mr. Trump’s (first?) administration. Listen to the debate (in Italian) .</p> <h5 id="here-is-the-upshot-of-my-argument"><strong>Here is the Upshot of my argument:</strong></h5> <p>For the first three years of his mandate, Trump presided over a goldilocks economy which largely was not of his own making, even though he created a strawfire with an ill-timed and unbalanced fiscal reform that favors the rich and limited fiscal space. The economic consequences of his denial of the COVID challenge will pose the greatest threat to his re-election.</p> <p>Regarding his America-first agenda, his promise to bring back jobs in the classical manufacturing sector remains largely unfulfilled. His unilateralism alienated European allies and led to a trade war with China which is ill-targeted in its focus on traditional trade in goods. More recently the focus has shifted to a strategic rivalry with China in high technology and the internet as well as to issues regarding IP protection and the level playing field in foreign direct investment. Here he has a point and this is a key issue that will stick around under future administrations, be they republican or democrat.</p> <p>Future administrations will have to deal with built-in injustices of the tax system that have been reinforced by Trump’s reform. The focus here will not necessarily have to be on fiscal consolidation — the US can afford to borrow and , provided it is doing well economically, it can outgrow even very high levels of public debt — but on tackling economic inequality.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Softening the Blow of the China Trade Shock — and lessons for EMU in the times of COVID19</h1> <p>Tue, 29 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>My new paper with Lilia Ruslanova: <strong> </strong> is now online as UZH discussion paper.<br> <strong>The upshot:</strong> U.S. state-level banking deregulation during the 1980s considerably dampened the fallout on local economies of the China trade shock a decade later. The reason: households in financially integrated areas could more easily borrow against their housing wealth to smooth consumption. This kept house prices and wages in the non-tradable sector up, facilitating labor reallocation away from manufacturing.</p> <p>The paper has a <strong>a clear take-away for European policy makers</strong> <strong>in the time of COVID19</strong>: the pandemic is likely to be a major reallocation shock, similar to the China Trade Shock, with very heterogeneous effects across regional economies in Europe. But,as our results show, for efficient reallocation to take place, household-level access to finance is paramount. However, cross-border retail financial integration in the EMU basically does not exist because banking integration is still superficial and fragile. Therefore, even in the current situation, EMU policymakers’ homework remains the same: <em>complete the banking union, get an EDIS done, encourage cross-border banking consolidation …</em></p> </article> <article> <h1>Links to past Autumn Forum “Globalization of Real Estate Markets” (9-12 Sep 2019)</h1> <p>Tue, 31 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>A with videos and slides of the keynote lectures by Yongheng Deng and Christian Hilber at last year’s autumn forum as well along with photo impressions from the forum is available on the Center for Urban and Real Estate (CUREM) page.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Test and freeze: UZH economics position paper on how to deal with the corona crisis</h1> <p>Tue, 31 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>A position paper that I co-authored and that has been endorsed by all faculty at UZH’s department of economics is now available from the department main web page (in German): </p> </article> <article> <h1>Open Source software for Online Teaching in the times of Corona</h1> <p>Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>As schools and universities have been shutting down around the globe, many of us in academia are wondering how we can get up to speed and to establish a stable workflow that allows us to get our podcasts, on-line lectures and tutorials out there for our students. In this post I provide a subjective list of open source tools that I am using.</p> <p>There are at least two reasons why open source has a key role to play in the current situation:</p> <ul> <li>OSS is easy to roll out quickly and in large numbers (e.g. to an army of teaching assistants for multiple tutorial session in big lectures) , without any licensing issues and in a decentralized manner.</li> <li>OSS is cheap . Actually it’s free. Hence, no need for financially stretched schools and universities to spend heaps of non-budgeted money on proprietary software at very short notice.</li> </ul> <h3 id="generating-a-podcast">Generating a podcast</h3> <p>The key tool for generating your own podcast or stream is a screen-recorder that also lets you register audio. That’s easy — most operating systems these days have these simple functions built in. However, in general you cannot capture more than one video source (e.g. a webcam with your talking head and a set of slides and/ or a whiteboard(graphics table input)).This, however, is very useful since it is cumbersome for the students to just listen to your voice and see your slides over extended periods. Face to face interactions–and if only imagined—help keep the attention and they also make it easier for the listener to cope with less than perfect recording quality and background noise.</p> <p>In addition, many of the simple tools do not let you capture selected areas of the screen, and in general you cannot change the resolution or the number of frames per second, which can be important for keeping the memory usage of your podcast in check.</p> <p>A professional open source tool that allows you to do all this (and much more), including not only recording but also instantaneous streaming is <strong>OBS or Open Broadcast Studio</strong> ( ). Importantly, this tool is <strong>available for all major platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux)</strong>, so interoperability with your Mac- or Linux-using colleague is ensured.</p> <p>Of course, much of what you can achieve with these tools can also be achieved with online conferencing services such as ZOOM (zoom.us). For example, you could easily generate a podcast in ZOOM by just recording an on-line conference. However, be advised that the demand on network infrastructure these days is very high and as I have experienced myself if you want to hold a meeting or generate podcast you may find that the system is overburdened. So a stand-alone solution such as OBS as a backup is clearly helpful. Also, ZOOM is weak on data protection and therefore many educational institutions do not whitelist it for use, even though , in the current situation, there is more pragmatism regarding this point.</p> <p>I have used ZOOM myself with a subscription that allows webinars with up to 100 participants and it has worked well. Students can ask questions and and you can even have little quizzes in the lecture and there is a chat. At the same time you can record the lecture and make it available as a podcast afterwards.</p> <p>Note that ZOOM stores the recording either locally or in the cloud. I always choose to store mine locally. After you have finished, you still need to transfer the recording into MP4 since ZOOM uses its own proprietary format for the capturing. This can actually create problems if things go wrong as I have found myself, since you rely entirely on the ZOOM client to do the conversion for you. I have also found that ZOOM works so, so with NVIDIA graphcis cards — a bit absurd that video processing is where graphics cards come into their own…. Again, OBS is probably better in this respect because it stores the recording in a standard intermediate format (mkv) which can then easily be transferred into MP4 or other formats. Nvidia support under OBS is great — Nvidia is one of the main sponsors of the OBS project.</p> <h3 id="video-and-sound-editing">Video and sound editing</h3> <p>Not matter how you decide to record your podcast, eventually you may find that the recording needs editing. Many university online platforms will only allow files of a certain size to be uploaded, so you may have to cut long videos. Sometimes you may find that sound was a bit too quiet or a bit noisy and needs editing. Or you may want to cut the videos for other reasons….</p> <p>Here, there are at least two open source apps worth exploring, both of which are, again, cross-platform: <strong>Openshot</strong> ( ) and <strong>Shotcut</strong> ( ). Of the two, Shotcut is the more advanced program which implies a slightly steeper learning curve. Both have full support for hardware encoding with NVidia and other graphics cards, which will substantially lower the processing times (factor 2-3 relative to CPU -only processing — and this on a computer with a strong CPU)</p> <p>You can also easily extract soundtracks in either program (even though I have found this to work much faster with <strong>Shotcut</strong>) and the export it to an <strong>audio editing program</strong>. Here, I have found <strong>Audacity</strong> ( ) to work extremely well. Again, this is an open source tool that is cross-platform (Mac, Linux, Win).</p> <p>A <strong>typical workflow</strong> would then look like this:</p> <ul> <li>import the recording into Shotcut.</li> <li>Extract the audio, save it to an audio file.</li> <li>Import into Audacity. Normalize and amplify the audio. maybe do some noise reduction.</li> <li>Save the audio into a new file.</li> <li>Import this new audio file into Shotcut, align with the now audio-free video. Cut appropriately.</li> <li>export into an MP4 video. (This last step usually takes time, so have a coffee…)</li> </ul> <h3 id="electronic-blackboards">Electronic Blackboards</h3> <p>Clearly, if you want to annotate your slides or want to develop ideas on a board, you will neet notetaking software and a device with atouscreen or at least a graphics tablet. Assuming you have that, one great open source tool (developed with tax payer money be the Canton and Republic of Geneva) is <strong>Openboard</strong> ( ) which again is cross-platform (for Linux, it is officially only for Ubuntu 16.04 but you can install a flatpak via Fwww.flathub.org and it will work on essentially any Linux flavor). This is really a nice tool. Its only shortcoming is that annotating slides is not really good.</p> <p>For annotating slides, there are of course a lot of paid or non-paid tools out there, but I am not aware of an open source tool doing this and that is available cross-platform. For Linux, I use the excellent <strong>Xournal ++</strong> which is available in the repos of some Linux distros (e.g. Linux Mint) and otherwise via flathub <strong>( </strong>). <del>If you know of any open source cross-platform notetaking tool, drop me a line.</del> (Update 07/05: Xournal ++ also seems to be available for Mac and Windows. See here: ).</p> <p>This blog post also appeared as an on .</p> </article> <article> <h1>Banking consolidation and risk sharing in the eurozone</h1> <p>Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>In a note summarizing my panel presentation at the recent Belgian Financial Forum /SUERF Conference now appearing in the Revue bancaire et financière, I argue that cross-border banking consolidation is a prerequisite for better risk sharing in the eurozone. However, the incomplete banking union perpetuates regulatory fragmentation an d prevents cross-border consolidation from becoming economically viable. Last but not least, the regional fragmentation of banking markets within many EMU member countries remains one of the biggest obstacles to consolidation, both within and across borders. </p> </article> <article> <h1>Holes in the Dike: The Global Savings Glut, U.S. House Prices, and the Long Shadow of Banking Deregulation</h1> <p>Wed, 01 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in the IMF Economic Review</h1> <p>Fri, 09 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Our paper (with Egor Maslov, Iryna Stewen and Bent E. Sorensen) is now forthcoming in the IMF Economic Review.</p> <p>In the paper, we argue that the interplay of equity market and banking integration is of first-order importance for risk sharing in the EMU. While EMU created an integrated interbank market, “direct” banking integration (in terms of direct cross-border bank-to-real sector flows or cross-border banking-consolidation) and equity market integration remained limited. We find that direct banking integration is associated with more risk sharing, while interbank integration is not. Further, interbank integration proved to be highly procyclical, which contributed to the freeze in risk sharing after 2008. Based on this evidence, and a stylized DSGE model, we discuss implications for banking union. Our results show that real banking integration and capital market union are complements and robust risk sharing in the EMU requires both.</p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in JEEA</h1> <p>Tue, 28 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Our paper “ ” (with Iryna Stewen) is now forthcoming in the <strong>Journal of the European Economic Association.</strong></p> <p>In the paper, we argue that capital inflows into the U.S. greatly contributed to the housing boom in the years prior to the financial crisis. States that liberalized their banking markets earlier saw bigger run-ups in house prices (and larger busts). The reason for this was the treacherous assumption, that geographically diversified banks should be allowed higher leverage (as would be implied by value-at-risk (VaR) models of bank risk management). States that liberalized their banking markets earlier had a stronger presence of geographically diversified banks by the time the savings glut started to hit the U.S. from the mid-1990s onwards. As we show, using bank-level data, the lending of geographically diversified banks was more sensitive to aggregate capital inflows and counties and states in which these banks had higher market shares saw a bigger expansion of mortgage credit and bigger house price increases.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Installing Linux Mint (or Ubuntu) on a Dell Precision 5530</h1> <p>Thu, 09 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>I firmly believe that using open source software is an important prerequisite for reproducible and accessible research. We cannot expect others (think e.g. students or researchers in developing countries) to buy super-expensive software to reproduce research. We should also make sure that the code we use, including the applications we run the code on, are free and transparent.</p> <p>Equally, I believe that we as academics have a special responsibility to teach our students to become free and independent digital citizens. That entails keeping a healthy distance to the closed eco-systems of commercial operating systems such as Windows or MacOS (not to speak of Android or iOS) which collect ever more data about everything we do on our computers and online. GNU/Linux operating systems are an open-source alternative where we can actually decide freely how much information about ourselves we share with others. Linux is also a great OS to run scientific software since it is lightweight in terms of resources. Also, most Linux distributions have the most important open source scientific software ready to install in their repositories. So, while setup may be a little more involved than with a Windows or Mac computer, you benefit from it later on, when installing and maintaining things gets a lot easier (If you’re an economist: ever tried to configure a Mac for using, e.g. Dynare and Octave? Well, you see. In Linux Mint that’s two mouse clicks in the software repos….)</p> <p>I have now used Linux as my main driver since 2009. Since 2012, however, I used a Mac, with Linux running in a virtual machine. This came from my frustration at the time about the many driver and periphery management issues I had encountered with the Linux versions that were around back then. But Linux development hasn’t stopped and today the situation is hugely improved. At the same time, MacOS development has virtually stalled and on the Windows side, forced updates have wreaked havoc on the data of many users. Therefore, it was time again to give a plain Linux install a new chance when my old Macbook Pro had to be replaced recently.</p> <p>Here are some experiences and things I learned when configuring and installing Linux Mint 19.1 on my new Dell Precision 5530 (64 GB, 2TB SDD, 4K display, NVida P1000) with TB 16 Dock and an external 4K Dell Display. Maybe they are useful for others interested in making the switch.</p> <p>Before you start, be aware that you can make your life easier by buying the model I have with Linux Ubuntu 18.04 pre-installed. In fact, my machine didcome with Ubuntu pre-configured and it worked very nicely. However, I have a preference for what I consider the rounder (and actually more Windows-like) user interface of Linux Mint. I am just more productive on it. But that’s a matter of taste. Since Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, most of the experiences below should also be useful for anybody wanting to install Ubuntu on a DELL Precision Laptop.</p> <p>1.Prepare a bootable USB stick with Linux Mint 19.1</p> <ol start="2"> <li>Next step is to convince your computer to boot up from the memory stick. Given the secure boot settings on all new machines, that has become a bit complicated in the last couple of years. Here is what to do on the DELL Precision 5530:</li> </ol> <p>— Before we start, note that I did a clean install, wiping my entire hard disk, so I didn’t keep another Ubuntu or Windows installation as dual boot. This would probably complicate things.</p> <p>— When booting up the computer, press F2 as soon as the DELL logo appears. This gets you into the BIOS. In the BIOS, you have to change the setting to enable legacy boot devices, change to legacy boot in “boot sequence” and then allow to boot from USB, moving this up in the boot order.</p> <p>–Save these settings, plug in your USB stick and reboot the computer</p> <p>— As soon as the DELL logo appears, press F12. This should get you into a screen where various boot options are given. If your USB stick is not recognized, follow the link to enable legacy boot, which takes you back to the step above.</p> <p>— Boot up from your USB stick. If at all possible, in EFI mode.</p> <p>— This was the hardest part. Once your USB stick is recognized, you will boot into an Linux Mint and can follow the guide through install process. It is important, the installation happens as EFI (legacy boot options do not work permanently in the DELL Precision, so you always fall back into EFI. So if you happen to install Linux Mint in Legacy mode, you will not be able to boot into that unless you repeat the above steps all the time by switching to Legacy boot in the BIOS since the Legay Boot option and sequence does not seem to be saved permanently. This jappened to me until I figured out that once the USB stock is recognized in EFI mode, your installer will automatically guide you through an EFI install process.</p> <p>— I installed Linux Mint w/o encryption of the Hard Disk. I don’t need that, I encrypt truly confidential data with cryfs on a folder-by-folder basis. I therefore have no idea how full encryption would affect system performance or if it would create issues of its own.<br> What I would clearly caution against is to choose local user folder encryption at install. That can create all kinds of problems, in particular, you will not be able to use Dropbox for Linux easily anymore. Since I am a heavy user of Dropbox for my collaboriative projects, that was no go.</p> <p>— Once the installer has completed, you can restart the computer (I had to shut down from the live session pressing the power button, it would not shut down on its own in finite time)</p> <p>— Machine restarts. You will usually not see a GRUB screen but at one stage, you see the Linux Mint logo appearing. You already are looking forward to starting to use Linux Mint on your DELL. But not so — the boot process will hang before you get to the login screen.<br> Here is how to deal with this: Restart the computer, pressing the power button. Then press SHIFT (for EFI installs). Eventually, you will see a GRUB menu (which is, by default, hidden after a clean wipe install, since there is only one OS to boot anyway). It may take a couple of attempts to get to the GRUB Menu, since the DELL Precision 5530 is so damn qick (you may also try pressing Esc, but for EFI installs it should truly be SHIFT).</p> <p>Once you get to the GRUB Menu, press “E”. This will give you the boot loader script for the currently selected boot option (you choose the first one, Linux Mint 19.1, which is set as sdefault anyway. There may be others (including a recovery option))</p> <p>Once you see the bootloader script, replace the words “quiet splash” with “nomodeset” in the line starting with “linux”.<br> (See the guide in the Linux Mint forum here: _options.html#nomodeset-boot-option)<br> Be careful not to mistype or delete anything here (the editor is very sluggish and the font will be tiny with a 4k screen). If you think you have mistakenly deleted or changed something else than the above “quiet splash”, just exit and start over with this step.<br> Once you have successfully typed in “nomodeset”, you can press CTRL+X or F10 and the machine will start to boot and get you to the login screen. Once you are in your Linux Mint session (probably it will be on software rendering mode, making screen display etc quite slow) you should install the nvidia drivers as described here: </p> <p>Once you have successfully installed the driver using NVidia Prime, you can restart the computer (it should now restart from using the appropriate menu items from within the Linux session)</p> <p><strong>DONE.</strong> Once you are restarted and logged in again, you are all set. You can now start to customize and get your Dell ready for work. Two important things I noticed:</p> <ol> <li>Resume suspend in NVidia mode does not work well, at least not if the NVidia Prime configuration menu (with all the settings for the graphics card is active). So here is what I did: I chose Intel mode (required password and login/ logout). Then suspend / resume works fine. I can even switch back to NVidia mode, activating it by logging out and in again (in which case, I do, however, not get back all the setting options in the prime menu). Then suspend /resume also works. (I have not tested if that really activates the Nvidia GPU, though). Careful however: if you leave NVidia mode on and restart the computer, you will again get the full Prime menu with all the settings for the Nvidia GPU — but also all the problems concerning resume/suspend.</li> </ol> <p>At first, Ithough I would just live with this bug, by keeping the machine mostly in Intel mode where everything works. I have 64 GB of memory, so standard graphics on web pages, video streaming etc. really works very fast, even in Intel mode. However, the NVidia resume-suspend issue evaporated once I tackled another inconvenience:</p> <ol> <li>Even though resume / suspend worked out of the box in Intel mode, the default mode after the Linux Mint install on my machine was “sleep2idle”. You actually should permanently change the mode to “deep”, which uses considerably less battery (sleep2idle keeps all the USB ports and other interfaces waiting for inputs while “deep” only keeps the RAM refreshed and switches off the CPU and everything else to save energy). See the discussion of system sleep states in the Linux kernel documentation here:<br> </li> </ol> <p>The sleep mode has to be set by passing the parameter mem_sleep_default=deep to the Linux kernel on startup.</p> <p>This has to happen by editing the GRUB configuration file:</p> <p>“sudo xed /etc/default/grub”<br> Then add the parameter “mem_sleep_default=deep” at the end of the line starting with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, so that it looks like this<br> GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash mem_sleep_default=deep”</p> <p>Save the file. Then run<br> “sudo update-grub”</p> <p>See here on more detail about how to edit the the grub boootloader configuration*:<br> *</p> <p>On the next reboot, your machine should start with “deep sleep” enabled. (You can check by typing<br> “cat /sys/power/ mem_sleep”</p> <p>in a terminal. This should give you something like</p> <p>“s2idle [deep]”</p> <p>i.e. the current option appears in square brackets.</p> <p><strong>Remark 1</strong>: Setting the sleep mode to [deep] also solved the suspend-resume hick-ups when in NVidia graphics mode. Resume/Suspend now works perfectly fine in both graphics modes.</p> <p><strong>Remark 2</strong>: to get the TB16 dock working on the Dell Precision 5530, you need to disable Thunderbolt Security to “None” in the BIOS and you should also disable the C-Dock option in the BIOS (otherwise you may get periodic disconnects of mice or keyboards or other peripherals attached to the dock).</p> <p><strong>Remark 3</strong>: You also get very good battery life on this powerful machine if you install the tlp tools:<br> <code>sudo apt install tlp tlp-rdw</code></p> <p>Then, after each fresh user login type at terminal<br> <code>sudo tlp start</code></p> <p><strong>Edit (Jan 2019):</strong> TLP works fine, but often I would still not get more than 3.5 hrs of effective use from the machine. I used <code>powertop</code> to find out that the NVidia graphics card was still using power even though the Nvidia-Prime driver would run in intel mode:</p> <p>Install <code>powertop</code> with <code>sudo apt install powertop</code></p> <p>Then run it from terminal with root privileges (<code>sudo powertop</code>). You can toggle powertops various screens with <code>Tab</code> and you eventually reach one screen where it lists “good” and “bad” (in terms of battery life) system settings. Here you can play around and check what changing the settings does for battery life. Don’t worry, these are temporary settings and all can usually be changed without endangering the system. Here you often find your graphics card. When you set it to “good”, battery usage usually drops dramatically. So, I decided to tell <code>tlp</code> do disable the graphics card when it is not in use.</p> <p>To do so, edit the tlp configuration file with</p> <p><code>sudo xed (or whatever the name of your editor) /etc/default/tlp</code></p> <p>and change the commented line</p> <p><code># RUNTIME_PM_DRIVER_BLACKLIST="radeon nvidia nouveau"</code></p> <p>to</p> <p><code>RUNTIME_PM_DRIVER_BLACKLIST=""</code></p> <p>Then save the configuration file and restart tlp (or your system). The issue is discussed here:</p> <p> </p> <p>The steps above essentially tell <code>tlp</code> NOT to exempt any devices(and in apricular not the ones that are governed by radeon (AMD), or Nvidia (nvidia or nouveau) drivers) from its power management. Guess what? Battery usage now increases to 4.30-5 hrs max in normal use (i.e. constant WLAN connection, many browser tabs open, some text or spreadsheet editing and the occasional music stream ,and based on 90% of the original battery capacity remaining).</p> <p>Of course, you should in normal circumstances ever only use 4 hrs max of these 5 hrs, since deep discharges (i.e. below around 20-25% charge remaining) tend to reduce the lifteime of Li-ion batteries.</p> <p>Note that 4.5-5 hrs at 90% battery capacity is perfectly OK for a machine with 64 GiB memory and a 4K display. The display certainly uses a lot of energy and on battery I usually keep it dimmed down to 20-30% (which is still incredibly bright. Even on AC power, I don’t ususally turn it to more than 50% brightness since it would hurt my eyes). The display is clearly better an brighter than my previous Mac’s (2015) Retina screen and with the tweaks above, the battery life is now also quite comparable.</p> <h4 id="update-i-jan-2020-activating-hibernation">Update I, Jan 2020: Activating hibernation</h4> <p>By default, current Linux distros do not support hibernation (i.e. saving an image of the current system state to disk). I have found that this is a little annoying since putting the system to sleep will still draw battery. On occasions I have therefore found that I had to restart my system since the machine ran out of battery while on sleep. Besides the inconvenience of having to restart the system, running down the battery reduces its lifetime and capacity (see below). Fortunately, hibernation can be re-enabled. The requirement is that you have a sufficiently large (i.e. bigger than your RAM) swap partition on your disk. When you have done a fresh standard install of Linux Mint, this will generally be the case (dual boots can be tricky, though). This web page has a great tutorial on how to get hibernation working in Linux Mint (sorry, in German):</p> <p> </p> <h4 id="update-ii-jan-2020-installing-a-logitech-trackman-marble">Update II, Jan 2020: Installing a Logitech Trackman Marble</h4> <p>Works out of the box, but wheel scrolling is not set up by default. There is a Ubuntu Community page explaining how to deal with it:</p> <p> </p> <p>I found it very convenient to set the scroll wheel to be the right button.</p> <h4 id="update-iii-jan-2020-increasing-the-resolution-of-the-grub-screen">Update III, Jan 2020: Increasing the resolution of the GRUB screen.</h4> <p>On a 4K display, the GRUB screen on start-up often is just too small to read.</p> <p>This can be adjusted by editing the file <code>/etc/default/grub</code> using sudo rights and uncommenting the line #GRUB_GFXMODE=<code>640x480</code></p> <p>If you want to change the resolution to someting a little less coars, find out which video modes your graphics setup supports. This can be done by going to console mode from the GRUB screen (press c) and by then typing</p> <blockquote class="border-l-4 border-neutral-300 dark:border-neutral-600 pl-4 italic text-neutral-600 dark:text-neutral-400 my-6"> <p><code>videoinfo</code></p> </blockquote> <p>at the prompt. This gives you the list of supported resolutions. You can then edit your <code>/etc/default/grub</code> accordingly. For example, I found</p> <p>GRUB_GFXMODE=1920×1440</p> <p>quite pleasing. Once you have saved the changes to <code>/etc/default/grub</code>, remember to run <code>sudo update-grub</code>.</p> <p>See here fore details: .</p> <h4 id="update-may-2020-configuring-touchpad-gestures">Update May 2020: Configuring touchpad gestures</h4> <p>It is easy to configure 3- or 4-finger gestures using the <code>libinput-gestures</code></p> <p>See the link here: </p> <p>To install:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code class="language-gdscript3" data-lang="gdscript3"><span class="line"><span class="cl"><span class="n">sudo</span> <span class="n">apt</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">get</span> <span class="n">install</span> <span class="n">xdotool</span> <span class="n">wmctrl</span> </span></span><span class="line"><span class="cl"><span class="n">sudo</span> <span class="n">apt</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">get</span> <span class="n">install</span> <span class="n">libinput</span><span class="o">-</span><span class="n">tools</span> </span></span></code></pre></div><p>Then install the repository in the link above:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code class="language-fallback" data-lang="fallback"><span class="line"><span class="cl">git clone https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures.git </span></span><span class="line"><span class="cl">cd libinput-gestures </span></span><span class="line"><span class="cl">sudo make install (or sudo ./libinput-gestures-setup install) </span></span></code></pre></div><p>and configure autostart with</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" class="chroma"><code class="language-fallback" data-lang="fallback"><span class="line"><span class="cl">libinput-gestures-setup autostart </span></span><span class="line"><span class="cl">libinput-gestures-setup start </span></span></code></pre></div><p>If the baseline configuration is good for you, you’re done. Otherwise you can copy the default configuration file from <code>/etc/libinput-gestures.conf</code> to the (hidden) configuration folder in your home folder: <code>~/.config/libinput-gestures.conf</code> and then edit it according to the specifications in the above link.</p> <p>Personally, I use vertical four-finger gestures to get the workspace overview and horizontal four-finger gestures for workspace switching. So, in <code>~/.config/libinput-gestures.conf</code> I have deactivated the standard gestures and added the following lines</p> <blockquote class="border-l-4 border-neutral-300 dark:border-neutral-600 pl-4 italic text-neutral-600 dark:text-neutral-400 my-6"> <p><code>gesture swipe up 4 xdotool key ctrl+alt+Up</code></p> <p><code>gesture swipe down 4 xdotool key ctrl+alt+Down</code></p> <p><code>gesture swipe right 4 xdotool key ctrl+alt+Right</code></p> <p><code>gesture swipe left 4 xdotool key ctrl+alt+Left</code></p> </blockquote> <p>This requires <code>xdotool</code> to be installed (<code>sudo apt install xdotool</code> ) and maps the swipes to the corresponding keyboard shortcuts for switching and overviewing workspaces which then are passed on to the system.</p> </article> <article> <h1>VoxEU column on Banking Integration in the EMU</h1> <p>Fri, 11 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>In a new column on entitled</p> <p> </p> <p>Mathias Hoffmann, Egor Masolv, Bent Sorensen and Iryna Stewen argue that dependence on domestic banks reduces risk-sharing in a crisis, reducing GDP growth in affected country-sectors. Benefits from banking integration are only robust to global shocks if banking integration takes the form of cross-border lending to firms and households.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Channels of Risk Sharing in the Eurozone: What Can Banking and Capital Market Union Achieve?</h1> <p>Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Globalization of Real Estate Network</h1> <p>Thu, 06 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Mathias Hoffmann is the Scientific Director of a new research network at the UZH Center for Urban and Real Estate Management. The objective of the network is to provide an international forum for economic research that examines how the forces of globalization shape housing markets around the world. To this end, the network collects and aggregates data on international real estate markets and organizes academic conferences, summer schools and policy events.</p> </article> <article> <h1>China’s role in the global financial crisis</h1> <p>Fri, 30 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>On Nov 29th, I gave a public lecture on China’s role in the origins and the handling of the financial crisis as part of a lecture series commemorating the 10th anniversary of the global financial crisis.</p> <p>Building on my research with Iryna Stewen and Yi Huang, I argue that global imbalances were an important factor in the run-up of the crisis. But the crisis was ultimately caused by U.S.specific factors (lax supervision, political pressure to increase home ownership, weak incentives for proper screening).</p> <p>During the crisis, China reacted with a massive fiscal expansion. This contributed to stabilizing global demand but it also exacerbated the misallocation of capital within China.</p> <p>The lecture slides are available (password protected — send me an e-mail for access)</p> </article> <article> <h1>Interview with SRF on emerging market capital flows</h1> <p>Thu, 04 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Mathias Hoffmann gave an to Swiss Television on the threats to emerging market economies from a strengthening dollar.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Shocks and risk sharing in the EMU: Lessons for Banking and Capital Market Union</h1> <p>Thu, 21 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>A short policy piece by Mathias Hoffmann and his co-authors Bent Sorensen, Egor Maslov and Iryna Stewen on how to ensure that risk sharing in EMU becomes resilient to systemic banking shocks has just appeared in a new CEPR e-book edited by my colleagues Jan-Egbert Sturm and Nauro Campos entitled</p> <h4 id="bretton-woods-brussels-and-beyond-redesigning-the-institutions-of-europe"> </h4> <p>In this piece we build on some of our earlier and on ongoing current research to compare the state of banking integration in the EMU today to that in the U.S. prior to state-level banking deregulation in the 1980s. As in the U.S. then, EMU today is essentially an integrated interbank market. But— as was the case among states in the U.S. prior to 1980— there is little direct cross-border lending of banks to firms or cross-border branching in the EMU. This makes macroeconomic risk sharing susceptible to systemic crisis as well as to country-specific banking sector shocks. We conclude that a proper banking union will have to encourage the cross-border consolidation and branching of banks and that this has to be complemented by a proper capital market union that encourages the cross-border ownership of equity. Just focusing on one of the two unions —as is currently advocated by some policymakers—will not be enough. A pre-publication version of the piece can also be downloaded .</p> <p>The book was launched ahead of the June 25th EU summit with some presentations by the authors across Europe, including two by Mathias Hoffmann at the Bank of Finland on June 19th and at ETH Zürich on June 22nd.</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Euro at 20</h1> <p>Thu, 21 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Mathias Hoffmann will present his new paper</p> <p> </p> <p>co-authored with Egor Maslov, Bent E. Sorensen and Iryna Stewen at the Conference “The Euro at 20” on June 25-26 2018 co-organized by the IMF, the Central Bank of Ireland and the IMF Economic Review. The full program of the conference and the conference draft of the paper are available . For the current version of the paper follow the link at the paper title above.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Shocks and Risk Sharing in the EMU: Lessons for Banking and Capital Market Union</h1> <p>Mon, 01 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Interview with Handelszeitung</h1> <p>Thu, 25 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>On May 9th Mathias Hoffmann talked to Swiss Economic Newspaper “Handelszeitung” about the economic implications of the election of Emmanuel Macron to the French presidency. Read the full interview </p> </article> <article> <h1>Affiliation with Norges Bank</h1> <p>Mon, 20 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Mathias Hoffmann has been appointed a visiting scholar at , the Norwegian Central bank, for the year 2017. During his visits he will work on a project with André Anundsen and Erling Roed-Larsen about the role of household leverage for housing demand.</p> </article> <article> <h1>ADB/ECB conference in Singapore</h1> <p>Sun, 08 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>I will present my paper with Toshihiro Okubo “**By a Silken Thread: regional banking integration and credit reallocation during Japan’s lost decade”**at the conference on at National University of Singapore. The conference is co-organized by the Asian Development Bank, the European Central Bank, Singapore Monetary Athority and the National University of Singapore.</p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in JIMF</h1> <p>Sun, 08 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>My paper with Rahel Suter <strong>“Systematic Consumption Risk in Currency Returns”</strong> is forthcoming in the </p> </article> <article> <h1>New paper in RoWE</h1> <p>Sun, 08 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>** <figure > <div class="flex justify-center "> <div class="w-full" > </div> </div></figure> **My paper with Samuel Cudré (Mc Kinsey & Co) is now forthcoming in the <strong>Review of World Economics</strong></p> </article> <article> <h1>A Provincial View of Global Imbalances: Regional Capital Flows in China</h1> <p>Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Systematic Consumption Risk in Currency Returns</h1> <p>Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Consumption--Income Ratio, Entrepreneurial Risk, and the U.S. Stock Market</h1> <p>Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>What Drives China's Current Account?</h1> <p>Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Securitization of Mortgage Debt, Domestic Lending, and International Risk Sharing</h1> <p>Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Consumption Risk Sharing over the Business Cycle: The Role of Small Firms' Access to Credit Markets</h1> <p>Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Has Risk Sharing Increased in Asia (and Elsewhere)?</h1> <p>Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Home Bias, Capital Income Flows and Improved Long-Term Consumption Risk Sharing between Industrialized Countries</h1> <p>Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Equity Fund Ownership and the Cross-Regional Diversification of Household Risk</h1> <p>Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Impact of the Euro on International Stability and Volatility</h1> <p>Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Swiss Franc Exchange Rate and Deviations from Uncovered Interest Parity: Global vs Domestic Factors</h1> <p>Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Real Exchange Rates and Real Interest Rate Differentials: A Present Value Interpretation</h1> <p>Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Consumption, Wealth and Business Cycles in Germany</h1> <p>Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Declining Home Bias and the Increase in International Risk Sharing: Lessons from European Integration</h1> <p>Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Financial Globalization, International Business Cycles and Consumption Risk Sharing</h1> <p>Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Lack of International Consumption Risk Sharing: Can Inflation Differentials and Trading Costs Help Explain the Puzzle?</h1> <p>Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Intra- and International Risk-Sharing in the Short Run and the Long Run</h1> <p>Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Comment on Michael D. Bordo and Thomas F. Helbling `Have National Business Cycles become more synchronized?'</h1> <p>Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>International Capital Mobility in the Long Run and the Short Run: Can We Still Learn from Saving-Investment Data?</h1> <p>Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>International Macroeconomic Fluctuations and the Current Account</h1> <p>Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Long Run Recursive VAR Models and QR Decompositions</h1> <p>Mon, 01 Oct 2001 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>The Relative Dynamics of Investment and the Current Account in the G7 Economies</h1> <p>Tue, 01 May 2001 00:00:00 +0000</p> </article> <article> <h1>Media & Non-Technical Writing</h1> <p>Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000</p> <h2 id="my-voxeu-columns">My VoxEU-columns</h2> <p> ,<br> with Michael Stiefel and Iryna Stewen, VoxEU.org, May 2021.</p> <p> , with Egor Maslov, Bent E. Sorensen and Iryna Stewen, VoxEU.org, Jan. 2019</p> <p> , with Bent Sorensen, VoxEU.org, Nov. 2012.</p> <p> , VoxEu.org, Jul. 2012.</p> <p> with Iryna Stewen, VoxEU.org, Feb. 2012</p> <p> </p> <p> , with Thomas Nitschka, VoxEU.org, Jun. 2009.</p> <h2 id="media">Media</h2> <p>Frequent Interview partner for German-language (SRF) and Italian-language (RSI) Swiss television and radio. For a full list and archive of appearances on these channels see (SRF) and (RSI).</p> <p> about the impact of sanctions on Russia and the world economy, 21 March 2022.</p> <p>Interviews with Radio della Svizzerao Italiana (RSI — and ) on the first effects of sanctions on Russia, Swiss participation and the role of China, 28 February 2022 (in German and Italian).</p> <p> ‘, , 20 April 2020.</p> <p> , Interview with <em>Handelszeitung</em>, May 9th, 2017.</p> <p> , <em>NZZ</em>, January 17, 2015.</p> <p> <em>Der Bund / Tages-Anzeiger</em>, December 20, 2012.</p> <p> <em>Finanz und Wirtschaft</em>, Nr. 55, July 11, 2012.</p> <p> Stocks, Nr. 2, January 20 – February 2, 2012.</p> <p> <em>Tages-Anzeiger,</em> August 11, 2011.</p> <p> Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Nr. 173, July 26/27, 2008.</p> </article> <article> <h1>PhD Students</h1> <p>Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000</p> <h3 id="current">Current</h3> <p> (UZH Finance)</p> <p> (UZH Econ, co-advisor w/Florian Scheuer)</p> <h3 id="former">Former</h3> <p> , University of Mannheim</p> <p> University of Bonn</p> <p> (co-advisor with David Dorn) The World Bank</p> <p> University of Liechtenstein</p> <p> , ECOFIN</p> <p> McKinsey & Company</p> <p> , Bank for International Settlements (currently IMF)</p> <p> , University of Wuppertal</p> <p> , Swiss National Bank (formerly at BIS)</p> <p> , Credit Suisse Asset Management</p> <p> Swiss National Bank</p> <p> Credit Suisse</p> <p> , Asian Development Bank</p> <p> , (co-advisor with Ulrich Woitek) Asian Development Bank</p> <p> , Swiss Economics</p> <p> , (co-advisor) University of Indonesia</p> <p> , University of Hamburg</p> <p> , </p> <p> , BIT Capital</p> <p>Rahel Suter-Studer Health Department of the Canton of Zurich</p> <p>Lobsang Tshering</p> </article> <article> <h1>Short Bio</h1> <p>Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000</p> <p>Mathias Hoffmann is Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich. His research focuses on the macroeconomic aspects of international financial integration and on the link between financial markets and the macro-economy more generally. His recent published articles include papers on the determinants of international capital flows and imbalances, the international transmission of business cycles, on international risk sharing, banking regulation, and housing markets. Prior to arriving in Zurich, he was Professor at the University of Dortmund in Germany and a Lecturer at Southampton University (UK). He holds a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in Florence and obtained his undergraduate education in economics and mathematics at WHU School of Management, Brandeis University and the University of Bonn.</p> <p>Mathias Hoffmann is affiliated with the University of Zurich’s research priority program in financial regulation (URPPP FinREG), a fellow of CESifo Munich and of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA) at the Australian National University, and has held visiting positions at the University of California at Berkeley, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Bank of Finland, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank for International Settlements, Norges Bank, Keio University and Stanford University.</p> </article> </main></body></html>