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Nachdem im zweiten Projektband das Vorkommen von Kommentaren in den europäischen Zeitungslandschaften beschrieben wurde, rückt dieser dritte Band die Frage in den Mittelpunkt, welche Methoden verschiedene linguistische Disziplinen für die vergleichende Analyse meinungsbetonter Texte bereitstellen. Vorgestellt werden argumentationsorientierte Verfahren aus der Publizistikwissenschaft und Rhetorik, die Erfassung von Stilmustern und Handlungsstrukturen, quantitative und computerlinguistische Herangehensweisen sowie solche Beschreibungsmodelle, die in der systemisch-funktionalen oder der kulturkontrastiven Linguistik beheimatet sind. Auch die Markierung von Evidentialität und die Etablierung von Textsortennetzen gehören zu dem in diesem Band präsentierten Methodenspektrum.

“Despite the efforts of policy makers to tackle recessions as they happen, there is ample evidence that major economic downturns produce lasting negative effects on real GDP, pointing to the existence of “economic scarring”. This paper takes a fresh look at economic scarring in 26 OECD countries, including 14 EU member states, since 1970 and examines the role played by fiscal policy in limiting these impacts. It finds that higher current expenditure does not mitigate the lasting impact of major economic downturns on real GDP. By contrast, more government investment could help to do so, but this is generally less favoured as a policy response. As a result, scarring effects are significant, confronting governments with higher debt levels, which in turn weigh on the room for manoeuvre in subsequent downturns. In sum, fiscal policy makers face two difficulties in the event of a major economic downturn: adopting the right type of fiscal expansion, and finding the right time to pivot from short-term stabilisation to fiscal consolidation, while protecting investment.”

Using EIBIS data, this paper investigates the effects of different loan conditions on firms’ propensity to invest in intangible assets. When firms face restriction in how much they can borrow, this has a strong effect on how much they invest in intangible assets. Using European firm-level data from the EIB Investment Survey, this paper shows that, by contrast, unfavourable interest rates, maturity and collateral requirements have no significant effects on the probability to invest in intangible assets, provided firms are satisfied with their loan size. These terms however, do have a negative impact on the probability to invest in multiple intangible assets, undermining the ability of firms to benefit from the complementarities of these assets. The paper documents the effect of loan conditions on investment intensity, as well. The effect of quantity rationing on the amount invested in intangible assets is found to be limited. Other loan conditions however, like cost, maturity and collateral requirements, have significant effect on investment intensity.

“The last three decades have witnessed substantial changes in the foreign exchange markets in Africa, with moves towards liberalisation and flexible exchange rate regimes. This has increased the influence of financial market conditions and heightened the risk of exchange rate volatility and large and sudden exchange rate movements. This paper investigates the determinants of nominal exchange rates, their volatility, and crash risk in African lower and lower-middle income countries. It combines macro-panel estimations for 15 such countries with insights from interviews with market participants. It shows the importance of these countries’ distinctive export structure, concentrated in a few agricultural and mineral-based commodities, as well as recent financial integration, for exchange rate determination. It finds that terms of trade, export concentration, and export prices have a significant impact on the exchange rate level and volatility. By contrast, financial factors including the interest rate differential, international market conditions, and short-term financial flows, influence the likelihood of sudden and large exchange rate movements.”

The EIB Climate Change Risk Country Scoring Model provides a way to comprehensively assess the climate change risks faced by more than 180 countries. The two sets of scores for physical and transition risks aggregate exposures to various risk factors, taking into account the adaptation and mitigation capacity of each country. The scores confirm that climate risk is a relevant challenge for all countries. However, low-income economies are more vulnerable to physical risk — in particular to acute events, rising sea levels and excessive heat — and in parallel have lower ability to mitigate the challenges posed by the energy transition. High-income economies generally face higher risks from the transition to a low-carbon future. Countries more dependent on fossil fuel revenues are also among the most exposed to transition risk. This paper provides insights into the model as it is currently being developed. Understanding the relative climate risks faced by countries support the management of climate risks at the country level, as well as helping to understand the environmental and policy conditions faced by firms in each country. It can also help to identify mitigation and adaptation priorities and related financing needs. Taken together, a better understanding of the risks and the consequent adaptation and mitigation needs will help to ensure that opportunities to enhance climate resilience are not missed.

When firms suffer losses from extreme weather events, such as storms, foods, droughts or landslides, it has implications for their investment plans and the finance their need. This paper investigates the investment and financing decisions of firms that experience monetary losses due to such extreme weather events. It looks at firms in 41 economies, mainly emerging and developing markets, using data from the EBRD-EIB-World Bank Enterprise Survey. It finds that firms hit by extreme weather are more likely to invest in long-term assets, in a way that fits with the need to either replenish damaged capital or to adapt to climate change. In addition, they are more likely to integrate climate-friendly measures in their production processes. Although these firms have higher needs for bank credit, they are not more likely to be credit constrained than the average firm. Nonetheless, they face higher loan rejection rates and have, on average, more debt than otherwise comparable firms. This suggests that climate change has the potential to erode the quality of firm balance sheets over time.

“The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects affected sectors in different ways, including on the firm-level productivity. Findings show that firms’ responses to the COVID-19 crisis varied within sectors: more productive firms coped with the crisis better in terms of closures and employment adjustments. They were also more likely to speed up some digitalisation processes. These findings imply that the recent crisis could amplify the difference between highly productive and less productive firms. When it comes to the governments’ policy measures, we find strong usage at the firm level, but very little differentiation across productivity quantiles, suggesting room for a more targeted approach for the reminder of the pandemic.”

The factors behind the pre-crisis growth model of the Central, Eastern and South-Eastern European EU countries (CESEE) region – skilled yet affordable labour force, foreign direct investment, imports of productivity-enhancing technology – are having less effect, but are yet to be substituted. This paper proposes a new growth model centred around a shift towards more home-grown innovation, digitalisation, climate change mitigation and a strong focus on skills, labour and social inclusion, to leave the middle-income trap behind for good and to boost economies’ growth prospects in a post-COVID world. Based on analysis of firm-level data, it highlights the prerequisites of making this transition happen.

“The availability of talent and skills has been a significant investment obstacle for firms across the EU over the years, with several sources highlighting the persistence and prevalence of skill shortages. In this paper, we use the European Investment Bank’s Investment Survey (EIBIS) for the empirical analysis, which allows tracking corporate training investment on a yearly basis. To understand the reasons for firms’ decision to invest in their workforce, we examine transition patterns and employ dynamic panel data estimation. We also analyse the impact of COVID-19 on firms’ investment in workforce training and transitions in and out of training. Despite a slow upward trend in training investment observed in recent years supported by labour market recovery, differences across firms and countries have persisted. The pandemic risks aggravating these differences, through its uneven impact on labour markets and differences in corporate innovation, firm structure and resilience. While firm training can be an important element for firms and their workforce to adjust to the post-pandemic environment, asymmetries in training investment could make it harder for those already lagging. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy implications.”

Providing a technical analysis of the data quality of the EIB Investment Survey (EIBIS), this paper finds that the chosen sampling framework captures the business population of interest well and that there is little evidence of selection bias during fieldwork. This suggests that EIBIS is a reliable data source to study the corporate investment situation in the EU.

As the productivity of the European economy shows signs of slowing down, many hopes are pinned on digital technologies to reverse this trend. This study uses data from the EIBIS 2019 survey to examine whether the adoption of different digital technologies (such as advanced robotics, 3D printing, or Internet of Things) by firms in the EU have different impacts on productivity. It also examines whether these different technologies have different implications for employment growth, and whether there are complementarities between technologies when it comes to firm performance.

“Public debt levels are a very weak predictor of a country’s credit rating if a country’s other features are not taken into account. However, everything else equal, more public debt is associated with worse ratings. This paper explores the relationship between debt and sovereign creditworthiness through the debt thresholds associated with rating changes. It finds that the impact of an increase in public debt is non-linear and crucially depends on a country’s economic situation. Low levels of gross domestic product per capita are associated with a smaller range of possible ratings than higher levels. In countries with a higher gross domestic product per capita, a change in debt levels is thus more likely to result in a rating change. Overall, the non-linear relationship between debt and creditworthiness is substantial, and accounting for it improves the performance of sovereign credit rating models significantly.”

“The sudden onset of the COVID shock has left European economies reeling, resulting in a sudden contraction of demand that has hit some vulnerable firms and sectors in a remarkably uneven way. There is a genuine interest from policymakers to learn about which types of firms have been left in vulnerable circumstances as a result of the crisis. In this paper, we present new evidence on the evolution of investment plans of certain groups of firms suspected of being vulnerable -young and small firms, High-Growth Enterprises (HGEs) and R&D investors. We applied a difference-in-differences approach on panel data regarding forward-looking investment expectations. The results show that all the vulnerable groups are pessimistic about the availability of internal and external finance, with HGEs suddenly expecting less of a positive change in investment, and R&D investors expecting a negative change in investment.”

The Statistical Report presents in list form the projects financed and borrowings undertaken by the EIB in 2019, together with a list of the EIF’s projects. It also includes summary tables for the year and over the last five years.

Relying on the EIB Online Survey on Climate Innovations, we investigate the different climate innovations European firms are currently using, their motivations and challenges, and their views on current regulatory frameworks. The analysis confirms that there’s a strong link between climate innovation and firm performance, but also that firms suffer from the low availability of finance. To create more successful firms in the climate sector, European policymakers should strengthen policies that reduce regulatory uncertainty and work actively to improve access to finance conditions, in particular for start-ups.

During the COVID-19 crisis, the European corporate ecosystem avoided major disruptions, and corporate bankruptcy rates even declined. This outcome mostly resulted from the strength of support from monetary, financial supervisory and fiscal policies. Using the 2021 vintage of the EIB Investment Survey (EIBIS) matched with balance sheet data on firms’ profits and losses, this paper investigates what has driven the allocation of fiscal policy support and the impact of this support during the investment recovery. It finds that support was largely directed towards firms that were most affected by the crisis in terms of lost sales, and was not tilted firms already weak before the crisis. It also shows that the firms that benefitted from this support tend to be more optimistic in their investment plans, especially with regard to digital technologies.