Wages are only mildly cyclical, implying that shocks to labour demand have a larger short-run impact on unemployment rather than wages, at odds with the quantitative predictions of the canonical search model - even if wages are only occasionally renegotiated. We argue that one source of the wage...

Outright bank failures without prior indication of financial instability are very rare. Supervisory authorities monitor banks constantly. Thus, they usually obtain early warning signals that precede ultimate failure and, in fact, banks can be regarded as troubled to varying degrees before...

This paper analyzes the effect of the business cycle on the regulatory capital buffer of German savings and cooperative banks in the period 1993-2003. The capital buffer is found to fluctuate anticyclically over the business cycle. The fluctuation is stronger for savings banks than for...

This study investigates how West German spouses have responded by adjusting their time allocation to the alimony reform introduced in 2008. This reform imposed financial self-responsibility after a finalized divorce. It weakened the relative bargaining position of the spouse with a claim for...

Social capital theory predicts individuals establish social ties based on homophily, i.e., affinities for similar others. We exploit a unique sample to analyze how similarities and social ties affect career outcomes in banking based on age, education, gender, and employment history to examine if...