In the third quarter of 2014, the financial assets of households rose by €28 billion on the quarter, climbing to €5,011 billion. While the transaction-related acquisition of financial assets amounted to just under €34.5 billion, leaving it roughly unchanged compared to the previous quarter, valuation losses, notably on shares, curtailed growth in assets by around €6.5 billion. With regard to types of investment, the trend towards liquid and lower-risk assets, which has been evident for some time now, continued into the third quarter.

The Deutsche Bundesbank posted its first-ever representative to South Africa at the country's German Embassy on 1 August 2016 with a view to deepening the bank's cooperation with the G20 emerging market economy.

The advantages or disadvantages firms experience as a result of their size, referred to in the economic literature as returns to scale, are of central importance in many economic models. Increasing returns to scale, whereby unit costs decrease as output volume increases, could explain productivity differences between Europe and the United States. We present fresh evidence on the returns to scale of European firms: most exhibit constant returns to scale, but a non-trivial share also show increasing returns to scale.

Professor Dr. Axel A. Weber, Präsident der Deutschen Bundesbank, Vortrag an der Universität Siegen