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Weitere Publikationen: Thomas Url (74 Treffer)

in: Sébastien Commain, Ján Šebo, Will you afford to retire? The Real Return of Long-term and Pension Savings. 2023 Edition
Buchbeiträge, Better Finance, Dezember 2023, S.40-60, https://betterfinance.eu/publication/willyouaffordtoretire2023
Auftraggeber: Better Finance – The European Federation of Investors and Financial Services Users
With around 90 percent of the average retirement income received from public pension entitlements, the Austrian pension system is very reliant on the first pillar. Occupational pensions are primarily offered through pension funds and insurance companies. Direct commitments are an alternative vehicle, but their usage stagnates. The option for defined contribution (DC) plans with favourable tax treatment offered either by pension funds or insurance companies boosted the prevalence of occupational pensions in Austria. While occupational pensions have become more popular over time, low interest rates and a high liquidity preference dampened demand for individual life insurance contracts. Over the years 2002 through 2022, the performance of pension funds in real net terms has been positive, with an annualised average return of 0.3 percent before tax. The life insurance industry followed a distinctly more conservative investment policy and achieved an average annual net real return before tax of 1.4 percent.
Energy Price Shock Poses Additional Challenge to Austria's Price Competitiveness (Energiepreisschock stellt eine weitere Herausforderung für Österreichs preisliche Wettbewerbsfähigkeit dar)
Auftraggeber: Oesterreichische Nationalbank
This article reports on the latest update of Austria's effective exchange rate indices, which aggregate bilateral exchange rates and relative prices or costs into indicators of Austria's short- to medium-term international competitive position. The weighting scheme on which the indicators are based uses bilateral trade data for Austria's 55 most important trading partners. With the latest update, the three-year averaging period was moved forward to 2016-2018. The main results are as follows: Based on the recalculated country weights, we confirm the preliminary finding of a medium-term worsening of Austria's competitive position, although alternative price indices would appear to provide conflicting signals. In particular, measures based on producer prices and unit labour costs indicate competitiveness gains, while the HICP/CPI-based index shows marked losses. These diverging signals, however, merely reflect data availability at the current edge. With regard to the geographical focus of Austria's international trade relations, we observe a further shift toward overseas markets in the US dollar area and China, away from Western Europe and Russia. The real effective exchange rate for the tourism industry, which we developed during the previous update and enhanced during this update, reflects a more pronounced appreciation in the tourism sector than in the service sector as a whole. However, according to the latest figures on overnight stays this loss in price competitiveness has had no significant dampening effect on tourism demand in recent months. Finally, we address the economic costs of Austria's current inflation differential to the euro area, which has induced a real appreciation. In two simulations, we quantify realized effects and calculate expected future losses driven by higher unit labour costs. In total, we find that the loss in price competitiveness may cause the Austrian economy to shrink by around ¾ to 1 percentage point between 2022 and 2025.
We analyse the emergence of the Vienna Initiative (VI) as a public-private partnership in the wake of the global financial crisis and its short-term impact on risk metrics of Western European banks and individual countries. We find that adverse herding behaviour toward banks provides an explanation for banks' (non-)participation in the initiative. The VI measures were successful in mitigating adverse herding behaviour, underscoring their strong signalling effect on investor sentiment. Additionally, they attenuated financial market stress in those Central, Eastern and South-eastern European economies that were addressed by the VI, while having only minor adverse spillovers to those that were not.
In contrast to other large economies, the euro area shows a high regional dispersion of inflation rates since the mid of 2021. The energy price shock uncovered structural differences among member countries of the currency union. Additionally, European governments responded with administrative or fiscal interventions of varying degree. A consistent pattern emerges with low inflation countries implementing policies dampening the HICP more intensively, while high inflation countries behaved more restrained. Potential monetary policy responses to an energy price shock include a differential weighting of country specific inflation rates in the loss function or, alternatively, macroprudential measures. If a wage-price spiral is set in motion, the ECB would have to swiftly raise the key interest rates to confirm its commitment to the inflation target.
in: Aleksandra Mączyńska, Ján Šebo, Ştefan Dragoş Voicu, Long-Term and Pension Savings – The Real Return. 2022 Edition
Auftraggeber: Better Finance – The European Federation of Investors and Financial Services Users
With around 90 percent of the average retirement income received from public pension entitlements, the Austrian pension system is very reliant on the first pillar. Occupational pensions are primarily offered through pension funds and insurance companies. Direct commitments are an alternative vehicle, but their usage stagnates. The option for defined contribution (DC) plans with favourable tax treatment offered either by pension funds or insurance companies boosted the prevalence of occupational pensions in Austria. While occupational pensions have become more popular over time, low interest rates and a high liquidity preference dampened demand for individual life insurance contracts. Over the years 2002 through 2021, the performance of pension funds in real net terms has been positive, with an annualised average return of 1.5 percent before tax. The life insurance industry followed a distinctly more conservative investment policy and achieved an average annual net real return before tax of 1.9 percent.
We assess the effectiveness of the financial sector stabilisation measures taken by the Austrian authorities in the wake of the global financial crisis. Employing an event study methodology, we evaluate domestic and cross-border effects involving Central, Eastern and South-eastern European economies. We identify recapitalisations and public guarantees as the most effective sovereign interventions. Both mitigate financial market stress at home and abroad. However, a risk-shifting effect emerges at the sovereign's expense which undermines their effectiveness relative to monetary policy interventions. Moreover, in complement to the actual implementation, the mere announcement of interventions already mitigates financial market stress, underscoring the extent of policy credibility.
This article reports on the most recent update of Austria's effective exchange rate indices, which serve to aggregate data on bilateral exchange rates and relative prices or costs into indicators of Austria's short- to medium-term international competitive position. As before, the weighting scheme builds on bilateral trade data for Austria's 56 most important trading partners and a three-year averaging period, which we were able to move forward to the period 2013-2015. Upon recalculation of existing observations from January 2013 onward, we find confirmation for the medium-term worsening of Austria's competitive position, but in a less pronounced form than suggested by the previous weighting scheme. On the tail end of the curve, the COVID-19 crisis in general and short-time work subsidies in particular have distorted several indicators in 2020 and 2021. With regard to the geographical focus of Austria's international trade relations, we observe a shift away from the large EU economies towards the USA and China, plus a weaker shift from Northeastern Europe towards Eastern Europe and Turkey. Given the economic relevance of tourism for Austria, we newly created a real effective exchange rate for the tourism industry. In this segment of the economy, we see a more pronounced appreciation than in the service sector as a whole from 2015 onward, which would normally imply a decline in tourism services output. That Austria's tourism industry clearly continued to thrive indicates that the appreciation coincided with an upward shift of prices and supply toward higher quality segments.
in: Long-Term and Pension Savings – The Real Return
With around 90 percent of the average retirement income received from public pension entitlements, the Austrian pension system is very reliant on the first pillar. Occupational pensions are primarily offered through pension funds and insurance companies. Direct commitments are an alternative vehicle, but their usage stagnates. The option for defined contribution plans with favourable tax treatment offered either by pension funds or insurance companies boosted the prevalence of occupational pensions in Austria. While occupational pensions have become more popular over time, low interest rates and a high liquidity preference dampened demand for individual life insurance contracts. Over the years 2002 through 2020, the performance of pension funds in real net terms has been positive, with an annualised average return of 1.4 percent before tax. The life insurance industry followed a distinctly more conservative investment policy and achieved an average annual net real return before tax of 2.1 percent.
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