Gudrun Moede is the new head of the Bundesbank's Representative Office in Tokyo. She and her deputy, Matthias Vogel, were welcomed by Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret at a reception in Tokyo.

According to the Bundesbank, the German economy maintained its recent spell of fairly strong growth during the summer months. Writing in the September edition of the Monthly Report, the Bank's economists note that the pick-up in industrial activity is still taking some time to materialise, however.

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are becoming increasingly important as a cost-effective option for investors, albeit one which comes with its own specific risks attached, as the Bundesbank explains. According to the current issue of the Monthly Report, the risks for the financial system as a whole stemming from ETFs are currently limited, however. 

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.