This book has been prepared during my work as a research assistant at the Institute for Statistics and Econometrics of the Economics Department at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. It was accepted as a Ph.D. thesis titled "Term Structure Modeling and Estimation in a State Space Framework" at the Department of Economics of the University of Bielefeld in November 2004. It is a pleasure for me to thank all those people who have been helpful in one way or another during the completion of this work. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor Professor Joachim Frohn, not only for his guidance and advice throughout the com pletion of my thesis but also for letting me have four very enjoyable years teaching and researching at the Institute for Statistics and Econometrics. I am also grateful to my second advisor Professor Willi Semmler. The project I worked on in one of his seminars in 1999 can really be seen as a starting point for my research on state space models. I thank Professor Thomas Braun for joining the committee for my oral examination."

The first twenty years of the European Central Bank (ECB) offer a clear demonstration of how a central bank can navigate macroeconomic insecurity and crisis. As the global economy moves into a new phase of unheralded uncertainty, the story of the ECB holds multiple lessons of wider significance for the central banking community and researchers of monetary policy. This volume provides a unique account of how the ECB has reacted to the challenges confronting the euro area through its monetary policy, turning to innovative measures and unprecedented policy actions to fend off the various threats posed by the global financial turmoil of 2007/08, the euro area sovereign debt market crisis, and the subsequent period of anaemic growth and deflationary pressures. It also addresses some of the criticisms the ECB has faced regarding its policy initiatives. It identifies the ultimate motivation behind the ECB's cautious attitude in the early phases of the financial crisis, and its peculiar definition of price stability and attention for credit creation, as well as addressing the criticism that central banks were fundamentally unprepared to head off a major financial cataclysm as they were wedded to a deficient economic paradigm which made them blind to financial risks. It also shows that the ECB's unconventional low-interest policies have not compromised the position of financial intermediaries in the way commentators initially predicted they would. By condensing the facts and lessons of the first 20 years of the ECB, this volume will acquaint the reader with the structures and decision-making processes behind the complex, often controversial, crisis measures that were taken during some of the toughest economic challenges in the history of modern Europe, and provide them with fresh ex-post analysis on their effect on the real economy and inflation.

Fur die Beurteilung umweltpolitischer Massnahmen mussen neben dem Grad der Zielerreichung auch die Effekte im oekonomischen und oekologisch-technischen Gesamtsystem prognostiziert werden. Dazu haben sich disaggregierte makrooekonometrische Modelle als besonders nutzlich erwiesen. In einem vom Umweltbundesamt initiierten Projekt wurden erstmals im deutschsprachigen Raum zwei verschiedene Modelle parallel benutzt. Die Zuverlassigkeit wurde dadurch erheblich verbessert. Das Modell PANTA RHEI der GWS (Osnabruck) und der Modellverbund des RWI (Essen) wurden um die Umweltbereiche Wasser, Klima, Luft und Boden erweitert und dann zur Simulation folgender umweltpolitischer Massnahmen eingesetzt: OEkosteuer, Flachensteuer (jeweils verschiedene Varianten), Flachenangebots-Beschrankung, CO2-Steuer. Das Buch enthalt die Beschreibung der Modellstrukturen, die Darstellung der Simulationen und eine vergleichende Diskussion der Ergebnisse.