The troubling pictures of death and forced displacement in the crisis regions of the Middle East give us an idea of the scale of suffering endured by the refugees of war and have set in motion a wave of willingness to help here in Germany.
While the rising exchange rate has been an important factor over the past couple of years, if we look at it over the past five years or so, it did not rise as much as would have been expected on the basis of its past relationship with the terms of trade (Graph 3).