NEWSLETTER of August 14, 2026

The following content has been added at finexpert:

Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH)
IWH-INSOLVENZTREND: FIRMENPLEITEN IM ZWEITEN QUARTAL AUF HÖCHSTEM STAND SEIT MEHR ALS ZWEI JAHRZEHNTEN
As the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Halle (IWH) notes in an analysis published today, the number of insolvencies among partnerships and corporations in Germany rose again in June. In the second quarter of 2026, there were more corporate bankruptcies than at any time in the past 21 years. The increase affects nearly all major industries. >more

KfW Research
GERMAN VENTURE CAPITAL BAROMETER Q2 2026
In contrast to the Europe-wide heat wave, the business climate in the German venture capital (VC) market cooled off during the spring quarter. The sentiment indicator fell by 10.2 points to -35.8 points in the second quarter of 2026, remaining well below its long-term average. The cooling trend is attributable to an improved assessment of the current business situation by early-stage investors, while business expectations once again remained largely unchanged. The fact that expectations are only slightly more positive than the assessment of the current situation suggests that early-stage investors do not anticipate any significant improvement in the subdued sentiment over the next six months. >more

Kiel Institut für Weltwirtschaft (IfW Kiel)
GREIX‑MIETPREISINDEX Q2 2026: REALES MIETWACHSTUM STAGNIERT
Asking rents in German cities rose by 0.8 percent in nominal terms in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the previous quarter and by 3.0 percent compared with the same quarter of the previous year. The nominal annual rate has thus stabilized near the 3 percent mark. This is shown by the latest update of the GREIX Rent Index published by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. The index analyzes asking rents for apartments based on the VALUE market database in 37 German cities and regions, including the 30 most populous cities. >more

Bank for International Settlements
COMPETITION IN RETAIL DIGITAL PAYMENTS
Retail payments have digitalised rapidly in both advanced economies and emerging market and developing economies. Digitalisation has altered the competitive landscape, with new entrants (eg fintechs and big techs) and new technologies, yet incumbent banks and card networks retain their dominant position in key markets. In their role as operators, overseers and catalysts in payment systems, central banks support competition in diverse ways, depending on their mandates and institutional arrangements. >more

MACHINE LEARNING THE IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON FIRMS WORLDWIDE
Christian Breitung, Gerard Hoberg, and Sebastian Müller
2026
Using a global panel of public firms over more than two decades, we estimate firm-level impacts of abnormal seasonal temperature and precipitation through a flexible machine learning framework with theoretically motivated firm characteristics. While prior firm-level studies typically only find modest average weather effects using linear specifications, our approach uncovers economically large and statistically significant effects on sales, efficiency, profitability, and costs, which are concentrated in weather-exposed industries, labor-intensive and older firms, and firms in less developed regions. Model-implied weather effects also predict earnings announcement returns, suggesting investors underreact to abnormal weather exposure. Finally, using climate projections for 2049, we estimate economically meaningful negative long-run impacts that vary substantially across regions and firms, highlighting the importance of nonlinearities and firm heterogeneity for climate risk assessment. >more

LEANING AGAINST INFLATION EXPERIENCES
Stefan Nagel
2026
A large share of secular variation in real interest rates can be understood as the effect of monetary policy leaning against experience-based long-run inflation expectations. Survey microdata show that adaptive learning from experienced inflation generates highly persistent, slow-moving longrun inflation expectations. When expectations are shaped by experience, central banks cannot anchor them through communication. Instead, when expectations deviate from the inflation target, monetary policy must remain persistently hawkish or dovish to generate realized inflation outcomes that, through agents' belief updating, gradually pull long-run expectations back toward the target. Consistent with this mechanism, I find a strong positive relationship between experience-based long-run inflation expectations and real interest rates in the U.S., Germany, the U.K., and Japan. Under their subjective expectations, private-sector agents do not anticipate future reversals in inflation and short-term real interest rates. As a result, long-term real interest rates move with experience-based long-run inflation expectations about as much as short-term real interest rates do, consistent with the data. Secular movements in real rates are also accompanied by persistent patterns in interest-rate forecast errors. Overall, the interaction of monetary policy and learning from experience generates a distinct source of secular real-rate variation, beyond movements in the natural rate of interest. >more