The June 2014 edition of the Monthly Report explains – beside the outlook for the German economy as macroeconomic projections for 2014 and 2015 – Europe’s new recovery and resolution regime for credit institutions. It furthermore comments on the changes in the methodology and classification of the balance of payments and the international investment position. In the end, cash withdrawals at the point of sale against the background of motives for use and implications for cash holding are described.

Are asset prices driven by news or by factors unrelated to economic fundamentals, such as market sentiment? In most asset pricing models news play a dominant role, but most empirical applications find only a low explanatory power of news. A new study examines this problem using an extensive time-stamped event database and finds that about half of all high-frequency market movements can be attributed to news.